Colored Silences

My name is Irina Cucoveica, and I’ve lived in Sicily for most of my life. I came to photography almost by accident, and before I even realized it, I was wrapped in its magic — a magic I know will never leave me, one that brings me peace no matter the circumstances.

When I photograph, I need to feel a connection — with places, with people, with traditions. It’s almost as if something quiet opens inside me, a soft attention. That’s when I feel most alive, most free. I don’t direct or impose; I wait, I listen and observe the unnoticed details. Photography, for me, begins with empathy, the kind that invites you to linger just a moment longer than necessary.

I’m drawn to simplicity. To the silence that speaks. To a weathered chair in an empty courtyard, a clothesline full of color and texture blowing in the wind, or the stillness that comes from observing a server who is on their break. I find myself pausing at the rhythm of daily life, a woman arranging fresh bread in a bakery window, laundry dancing above narrow alleyways, a man lost in thought at his café table. These gestures are small, but never meaningless. I like to observe, without disturbing. I try not to interrupt, only to witness. The quiet poetry of small things, in photography and in life.

Lately, I’ve felt a shift within myself. A desire not to chase the “elsewhere” anymore, but to fully inhabit the “now.” Maybe time moves differently in Sicily, or it is simply a different kind of longing, not for movement, but for stillness. If I once felt at home wherever I found connection, today I long to stop, to stay, to put down roots. To feel the seasons stretch slowly across familiar walls. And the land that could become home again is Sicily, a place I have loved and resented in equal measure.

Here, everything is excessive: the heat, the humidity, the slow unraveling of time, the loud voices of the people. For a long time, I resisted it, the chaos, the weight of it all. But even this too much holds a beauty, a beauty I only now feel able to capture. The faded blue shutters under an afternoon’s sun. The curve of shadow and light that wraps around a building’s façade. The way an abandoned bicycle leans gently on an old textured wall still carries a kind of dignity. These moments ask for patience. They don’t shout. And so my photos have begun to reflect this slower rhythm, the poetry of the sea, the scent of fig trees, and the sun-bleached colors of this land.

For the first time in a long while, I’m starting to feel at home in a place that never quite was. Maybe home isn’t where you begin, but where you finally decide to stay, to notice, to commit, to soften. Every day, we learn to inhabit our own silence.

Not long ago, my Instagram handle was “@storie_daltrove_” — stories from elsewhere. Today it’s “@silenzicolorati” — colored silences. Both names speak to me deeply: one reflects who I was, the other, who I’m becoming.

I still shoot with my faithful Olympus E-M10 Mark III, but my perspective has changed — more grounded, more intentional — and I have different lenses than some time ago (M.Zuiko 25mm, 75mm, and 14–150mm). My goals are different now. In post-production, I always work in Lightroom, often using presets I’ve created myself, though I adjust them each time to suit the subject at hand.

Why presets? Because what I see with my eyes doesn’t always match what I wish I could see. So I invent my own world: muted colors, softened whites and highlights, gentle contrasts. I want to feel embraced by my photographs. I want each image to carry the same weight as a memory — softened by time, but unmistakably real.

And that’s what I hope others feel too, a warm embrace, and an invitation to let themselves be wrapped in the quiet poetry of small things.