Ezio D'Agostino

14.644

Almost 20 years ago, I was flicking through my parent's wedding photographs album.

In one of the picture, there was a young man, smiling alone. I've never seen him before, so I asked my father about him. He told me: "This is Umberto, your cousin; a few years after the marriage, he decided to disappear".

Nobody knows what he did, and nobody knows where he could be today. We have just our "last Umberto's picture", smiling behind his 70's glasses.

In 2010, I started the project 14.644.

14.644 is the number of people who have disappeared in Italy since 1975. Approximately 400 per year, more than one every day. Until now, none of them have been found. The reasons for the disappearance remain undetermined, but all of these cases fits one definition: voluntary estrangement.

On any given day, at any given hour, anywhere, men or women decide to cut their ties with the past, with their social and family roles, with their image.

         

Through the places where these people were last seen, my photographs wish recount the surpassing of this limit.

Texto: Ezio D'Agostino

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