Mala Tempora Currunt… Reports From Quarantine

Mala tempora currunt sed peiora parantur
(Bad times are upon us, but the worst has yet to come)

Marcus Tullius Cicero

This, it seems, Cicero said shortly before the end of the Roman Republic lot of years ago, and never was a phrase better suited to describe these “strange days” of quarantine that we are experiencing in this first half of 2020. But now we have entered the “Phase 2” of this emergency, so we must be a little more optimistic than our distinguished ancestor.

The Quarantine. It All Began When…

When, in fact, we don’t even remember it anymore! We have lived these last two months in a suspended time, locked up at home, forced to remodel our spaces, our existences, our relationships, our lives, to prevent our invisible enemy from affecting us and others. We tried to fill the time we didn’t have before, struggling to pretend we knew how to do everything, clinging to the unbearable excuse that before we didn’t have the time to do it, this everything. And so we became bakers, pizza makers, cooks, bloggers, hairdressers, social media managers, politicians, virologists, opinion leaders and whatever else, as we always do, as Italians, when some topic catches the attention of everyone.

The Fear…

But, indeed, we were just scared. Scared, not only by the virus, but of ourselves, of our empty silences, of our deepest selves that we were forced to find, and of the answers that we should have given to him. We are not used to doing that. We don’t have time. Our rushing daily life has made us lose our dimension, and we are no longer able to manage it when it reappears. But in this period of isolation we have had the opportunity to be a little more with ourselves, as well as with our loved ones, and who knows if this will help us to find ourselves again. At least a little bit.

Quarantine?… Let’s Photograph!

During these days of quarantine, despite Smart Working time, I have been thinking about all this, and how to deal with this period. It was not difficult. Hard, but not difficult. And after an initial period of loss and confusion, everything came back to fit in my days. I even found again the desire to photograph, which had initially disappeared completely. Thanks also to the “Strange Days” project promoted by friends of the Rifredi Immagine photo club, in Florence, and their video-conference meetings, and to the “project” of “Cronache Quaranteniche” promoted by FIAF, I tried to find inspiration in what surrounded me in my daily life.

A Small Picture Gallery

Here, then, is a short gallery of some images collected during this period. They represent the new objects and new ways of living that have been with us for almost two months now, and with which, I am afraid, we will have to live a little longer. I have tried to describe them, in my own way, so that they remain in our memory.

I don’t want to agree with Cicero, I want to be more positive, and so hope that the worst is behind us. After all, Phase 2 has begun… hasn’t it?

If you like my pictures, please go to see more on my Galleries Page.