What do you carry when you decide to disappear? It depends on who you are and why you disappear. Clothes: a winter scarf, shirt and velvet trousers. Socks, a sweater and a jacket. And then scissors, glasses, nail file. A brush. Election leaflets from italian politicians Cuffaro, Casini, Ulivo, la Margherita, La Nuova Sicilia and Christian Democratic Socialist Party. Images of Jesus and newspaper clippings depicting men of the Church. A typewriter. A Bible. A handkerchief with an illegible note, burned during the raid by the police in the hideout of Bernardo Provenzano, mafia don of the dons, on April 11, 2006 and hidden in the sink. And words like these from Matteo Messina Denaro in a secret message, a pizzino,
"You see, I have known pure desperation and I have been alone, I have experienced hell and I have been alone, I have fallen many many times and I have got back up again on my own; I have witnessed pure ingratitude on the part of everyone and anyone and I have been alone, I have known the taste of dust and in my solitude I have been nourished by it […] I am nothing, a loser, but if you need this nothing, I am always here for you, for anything. That is not rhetoric, I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I really love you.
With lasting esteem and love, as always
P. S.
When you have read this letter,
burn it."
Valerio Spada has photographed all of this, has collected evidences never shown before in a precious book "I am nothing".
I'm a boss but I am nothing. I decide of life and death, but I am nothing. I am nothing because I am like you. I walk by you. I live close to you. I believe in your God using the same objects that you use, but I do not use them as you use them. With my typewriter I compose messages of death.
"I am nothing" by Valerio Spada is an impressive work because it shows us the silence, the penetration of crime in everyday life and our failure or inability to defend ourselves.
Roberto Saviano
'Gomorrah Girl' and 'I am nothing' will be exhibit in november at Camera, Turin, curated by Francesco Zanot.