Sonia Marin was born in Padua on 25 February 1971. She has lived in Milan since 1989, where she works as both a freelance photographer and author. She has been a resident lecturer within the European Institute of Design Department of Photography since 1998, leading courses in technique and style; and she has worked in still-life advertising photography since 1994, creating editorials for numerous newspapers and collaborating with influential companies in the fashion and furniture sector. She stood out as speaker for the “Advertising Photography” segment at the 6th edition of the International Orvieto Photography Convention in 2004. Between 2013 and 2014, she developed an entirely analogue photography project for Unicredit entitled Sketches of Milan, An Artist’s View of the UniCredit Tower, which was later published as a photography book by Skira. She is currently working on an upcoming autobiographical project/book in black and white, dedicated to the city of London.

Hi Mum, I’ll be getting in on the 16:14 train.

My early years in Milan were punctuated with constant trips back and forth on the Milan-Venice Inter City train, leaving at 19:05 on Friday and returning first thing on Monday so I could get to lessons on time.

Every week for two years.

I have been coming home this way for 30 years: on trains, at different times, monthly visits, home comforts. Nowadays I sit in the “Silent Area” and the trains are faster. I always book a solo seat, happily sitting alone to absorb that same feeling of melancholy that I used to share with unsuspecting passengers who knew only that we would be keeping each other company in the 6-seater compartments finished in faux leather, often unheated and malodorous. It never changes, that poetic traveller’s melancholy, mixed in with sadness or contemplation of a beautiful frost-touched field or stray overhead lines that dangle before the window. It is the melancholy of somebody who, although happy to be going home, already knows that it will be a relatively short visit, a precious opportunity to make their mother feel like the most loved person in the entire universe.

So, I go home and then I come back again, and I never miss a visit: an anniversary, a bank holiday, Christmas, Easter, and the long-awaited summer. I take my pictures, sitting in my single seat, waiting for that melancholy to guide me towards beauty, and never missing a detail, I try to make sure I’m always there.

Credits:
Words and Photography by Sonia Marin