There is a wonderful and fantastic short story by Carver where a man puts all his furniture on show in the front garden in order to sell it.

A young couple arrives and together with the owner of the furniture start to dance in the garden, drinking whiskey, dancing to the music played on a record player which later on they buy.

Human life is perhaps this: a sequence of events, originating from one and involving another, in a dance that’s only apparently unmotivated.

I often say: we are all particles, bound by complex though often invisible relationships; relationships which reveal themselves as time goes by in fast, speedy, brilliant events; as quiet as lightning without thunder.

So if a union exists, a cluster even in this precise period of time, how can the group reveal itself, by what actions?

You can find an answer in the looks on faces, in the expression of eyes, in the tremor of lips. Images reveal them. Perhaps we are really made to give, to give ourselves; photography asks, strongly asks for total commitment in the action of taking a photo of someone. Every shot is a reflection in another person, not only by he who takes the image, the operator, but also by the spectrum, the person who is being photographed in front of the camera.

If it’s true that the portrait tells a story and historicizes it, it’s also true that a series of portraits is a short story of a place as well as of a time and so here is the revealing of a community occupying that time and that place.

Therefore, as the title to Carver’s short story invites: “Why don’t you dance?”

The portraits of Paolo Cenciarelli published in the photo gallery show
children and young people living in Quarticciolo, Rome.