ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Salvatore Mancini

Looking back throughout my 40 years of photographing what do I see through that clear reflective lens of time? From my first photograph in1967, a self-portrait with dark glasses and a beret, to one of my recent photographs, a self-portrait in the Rat Temple in Bikaner, India, the one word that jumps out at me is remembrance. Every photograph I’ve taken is an act of remembrance. I want to remember my passage on this earth. I want to remember the journey of my life, who I was, where I’ve been, what I thought, what I felt, what I dreamed and what inspired me. I want to remember all of my relationships, family, lovers and friends.

I don’t want to forget what the experience of living has been all about. I want to remember all those experiences that formed my identity, from my childhood origins to my adulthood travels. I want to remember all the questions I had, who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? I want photographs to represent those questions and their conclusions. I want to remember every sight and insight along my human journey.

I’ve been given the freedom to explore and make visible many of the yearnings that make life fulfilling, and at times painful. The act of photographing keeps me a few steps back from the void of self alienation, slows down the transient sense of time, and puts a frame around my memories.

To photograph is to remember and I with a photograph remember …

The moment when naked I pretended to fly off the Grand Canyon.
When I first saw the cypress trees of Point Lobos or the full moon rising over a boulder in Utah, inscribed with a procession of galloping horses.
Beholding the human fragility and strength in the faces of the mentally ill and retarded.
Seeing the body of a recently murdered young woman, a victim of gang violence.
Viewing a devotional procession to the Madonna della Civita, the patron saint of Itri, Italy.
Walking through the stone doorway of an Incan city in the jungles of Peru.
Seeing people being blessed by temple elephants in India.
A jellyfish being transformed into a jewel by sunlight.
Discovering industrial archeology in the forgotten rivers of Rhode Island.
A diver suspended in the sky over Narragansett Bay.
What my parents looked like before they died.

I want to remember it all, and photography has made this possible.