Roberto Sperotto - A Passion for History

The Vicenza-Schio railway line completes 150 years in 2026. It was built in 1876 to facilitate transport of cargo from numerous wool mills of Schio. During early 1900s, this railway line had different extensions including to Pieve Bel Vicino, Piovene Rocchette, Arsiero and Asiago.

To celebrate this 150th anniversary, recently an exhibition was organised in Schio, which presented the historical collection of documents and photographs of Roberto Sperotto.

 

I had an opportunity to talk to Roberto to about his passion for the history of this region around late 1800s and early 1900s, especially related to the period of the first world war.

This post is about Roberto Sperotto and his passion for history.

Alto Vicentino and the World War One

The area around Vicenza is known as Vicentino. The north-west part of Vicentino has the Alps, specifically the Little Dolomites and is known as Alto Vicentino (High Vicentino) because of its higher altitude.

 

Till early 1900s, the Alps mountains of Alto Vicentino marked the border between the Austro-Hungarian empire and Italy. This border was the site of different battles during World War One.

For example, you can check my posts on the War Cemeteries of Alto Vicentino and on the Centenary of Pasubio War Memorial.

Talking to Roberto Sperotto

Roberto was born and lives in Breganze, some kms to the west of Schio, an area known for its beautiful rolling hills and vineyards. He runs an agency in Breganze for driving licences and their renewals.

Roberto's key interest has been in the crucial role, engineering skill, and heroic contributions of the Italian military engineering corps (Arma del Genio) during World War I, and he has been collecting documents and photographs about it in Alto Vicentino. His collection about the local railway lines is part of WWI collection, as the railways had played a big role in the war. 

 

About his archival collection about history of Alto Vicentino around the first World War, Roberto explained, "There was an old house in the periphery of Rocchette, and I discovered that it was one of the buildings of the Rocchette-Asiago railway line. I started reading about the old railway lines and gradually collected different documents and photographs to have a global view of these railway lines and its different aspects, in relation to the world war."

Initially all these railway lines to Schio and its extensions belonged to a private society, "Società Veneta", and were nationalised in 1906. Alessandro Rossi, well-known industrialist of Schio running different wool-mills in this area, played a key role in their construction.

Initially the railway lines were built in narrow gauge because they were near the border with the Austro-Hungarian empire and they felt that these could be used to attack them. Thus, the main Italian railway with its broad gauge could not be used to bring munitions and heavy machinery to the border.

Roberto took me around the exhibition, sharing anecdotes about how he had managed to collect different pictures and documents, how specific parts of the railway lines were built, how the railway lines were used during the war. For example, he explained that the Austrian troops were on a higher level and thus, the Italian army thought that they could have poisoned the water of the torrents coming down and thus, preferred to carry water up the railway line to Asiago.

Roberto's Archives in His Books 

Roberto has a big archive of documents & photographs about this region and has written 3 books about the history of Alto Vicentino during World War I - 

(1) 1915-1918 War Railway Lines in Vicentino (1915-1918 - Ferrovie di Guerra Nel Vicentino) - written with Francesco Brazzale, published by Edizioni Grafiche Leoni, 2014: The book starts with the difficulties caused by limited railway lines in this part of Italy when the war between Austria and Italy was declared in May 2015. A couple of images about the railway line in Schio from this book are presented below.  

(2) The War Villas - 6th Armed Division & Military Engineering Corps (Ville di Guerra - La 6a Armata e il Genio), published by Edizioni Grafiche Leoni, 2018: This book looks at the villas located along the old Gasparona road connecting Thiene to Marostica and their role in the World War One, and how these were taken over by the military commands during the war. This book focuses especially on the 6th Army which included Italian, French, British and Czechoslovakian troops. 

(3) The Ferrarin Cousins - Men and Pilots (I Cugini Ferrarin - Uomini e Piloti), written with Roberto Mantiero, published by Grafiche Leoni sas, 2020: This book shares documents and pictures of Italian air-force pilots during the WWI, especially Francesco Ferrarin & Arturo Ferrarin, along with others like Leonello Marani, Girolamo Allegri,  Luigi Bourlot. The book also touches on the role of the well-known Italian writer, poet and Journalist, Gabriele d'Annunzio in the war.

Historical Images of Schio from the Book by Roberto Sperotto

Roberto's books are a rich source of historical images and documents from that period. As an example, two images from Sperotto's book "1915-1918 - Ferrovie di Guerra Nel Vicentino" are presented below, which are about the railway station of Schio.

(1) The first is an illustration about the visit of Prince Umberto in Schio for the inauguration of the Vicenza-Schio railway line in 1876. (click on the image for a bigger view)

 

(2) The second is an image of families leaving Schio as the first world war broke out in the nearby Pasubio mountains in Spring 1916.

World War One - A British Postcard

The next two images from the Roberto Sperotto's collection are of a picture-postcard of the Schio railway station sent home to one "Mrs Arnold" by an English soldier, dated 12 Nov 1918 by the war field office, on which the military sensor had cancelled the word "Schio", so that the location is not revealed. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

 

This same image was also used on the poster for the exhibition held in Schio for the 150th anniversary of the Vicenza-Schio railway line. 
 

In Conclusion

Roberto shows that persons moved by their passions can be an invaluable resource for collecting and safeguarding the micro-histories of small places, that are usually ignored by official historians and record-keepers working at international, national and regional levels.  

For the persons of Alto Vicentino, Roberto's photographic and documental archives are a wonderful resource about a crucial period of their local history.  

 *****

An Unusual Venice - Giorgio Schirato

Yesterday, on 4 September 2026, a new photography exhibition was inaugurated at the Toaldi Capra palazzo in Schio. The exhibition has works of a young Venetian Giorgio Schirato. 

His images of Venice are about stillness, where the silky smooth water and gentle pastel colours become frozen in a dreamscape. You see a city that still has the magic of Venice, but is different. Some of his other pictures, catch the light in such a way that makes you see something which otherwise you would not have noted. It is a beautiful exhibition.

After the inauguration, I had a brief talk with the photographer Giorgio Schirato (GS), which is presented below. If you are in or around Schio, do not miss this exhibition. If you can't come to the exhibition, take a look at his webpage and his Instagram page to have an idea about his works.

You can click on all the images for a bigger view - these Venice images are by Giorgio Schirato and are protected by copyright.

Talking With Venetian Photographer Giorgio Schirato 

 

SD: Tell me about yourself

GS: I was born in Treviso and when I was three years old, with my mother I went to live in Venice, and I grew up there. We were not in proper Venice, since we lived in Lido island for the first 20-25 years of my life. Only when I joined the famous Venice art school, Academia delle Belle Arti, then I shifted to proper Venice. There, I was sharing a house with some friends.

I had chosen the area of sculpture, as my focus in the art school. While I was studying it, I knew that actually I really wanted to do photography, I was already passionate about it. In the end, photography became my preferred way of creative expression.

Probably because I prefer expressing myself through things that are quick and making sculptures had become a kind of suffering for me, because they needed months of work. So slowly I started experimenting with photography. I like all the different ways of artistic expression, including painting, but I chose photography because I liked it the most.

However, instead of photo-documentation, which means documenting what you see around yourself, I always try to express something extra through my photography. For example, I can use the light - such as using a torch at night to obtain a specific effect that I want. Or by using long exposition times, so that the day-landscapes start looking different - they become a kind of aseptic, clean, smooth.

I am moved by a desire to see and interpret Venice as something which I feel inside myself. I want to absorb the beauty of our Venetian landscapes through stillness and in these kind of photographs, I want to avoid the human presence, so that I can focus on the essence of the place.

I want to express something which is different from the usual images of Venice. Therefore, I am not looking at the well-known city landmarks, instead I want to show you the glimpses of something, which you wouldn't see when you are here.

SD: On your website there are some folders showing different series of photographs, for example there are some showing silhouettes. You want to talk about different kinds of your work?

GS: My poetic photography, if I may call it that, can be grossly divided into 2 main types:

- first is the contemplative and experimental kind of images, where I use colour-photography, I study the site and then plan them to get a specific effect;

- the second are my images in black and white, they have a more graphic impact, through them I try to capture the moment, so these images are more immediate, less planned.

 

I capture both these kinds of images with the help of a tripod, but I try to vary other factors, such as the light, to get a specific effect. My images are not a representation of the reality, they are my interpretation of it. 

SD: How long you have been doing photography?

GS: This exhibition is showing the artistic part of my photography, which I have been doing now for about 25 years. It started as a passion when I was in high school.

At the same time, I am also a professional photographer since 2012, where I do specific kinds of photographic services. You can see examples of some of these works on my website.

SD: In these last 25 years, how do you see your evolution as a photographer-artist? 

GS: I have changed over the years, also because of the professional work that I have done. My professional work brought me in contact with a large number of persons, especially artists with their own ideas and long experiences, and interaction with them gives me new ideas and suggestions into my work. Some of those persons have influenced me as an artist.

 

However, my search to find my way of being a photographer, has been more through silence and interiority, and not so much through describing or discussing with others.

There are days, when I am inclined towards black and white photography, other days when I am more contemplative, and I look for specific effects, and finally there are some days when I just do not feel like clicking any pictures. When I wake up in the morning, I know that day, what kind of work I am going to do. There are days when I can see things that are not visible on other days, it may be something to do with my focus, concentration and inspiration, because it requires me to look beyond what my eyes can see.

It can also depend upon the light of that day. One day, the light may be such that I can't see anything special. On another day, the light may be such that even a simple thing looks different and has a more fascinating impact. One has to train oneself to really see, to discover the surroundings.

 

There are some days when I wake up with a desire to capture people and action. On other days, I just want to walk around in my city, to get inspiration for an idea, then I try to express it in the way that I feel it inside me. It is all about sensations and feelings.

SD: Do you also plan and set-up things to create a particular kind of picture?

GS: I prefer working with what is already existing and not create an artificial effect. I also don't create particular effects in post-production. All the effects that are there in my image, they come from working with my camera.

Even if we are living in the digital era, I try to think as if I am working with an analogical camera-film. Thus, I don't click a lot of pictures, I prefer clicking pictures as a gift, only a few and well thought-out clicks. And, I prefer limiting the use of technology in my work.

 

This is also a kind of rebellion against digital world and there are some persons who prefer using analogical film.

SD: What is the value of photography in a world where millions of tourists click millions of pictures every day, with their mobile phones?

GS: With the social media, the significance of images has been lost. Our ideas of beauty and ugliness have been turned upside down. Thus, even for this, one needs to go back to the older ways doing things, to think and reflect more and to have less anxiety about missing something by clicking a large number of pics. Today we are just bombarded with images.

I feel that it is better to click as few pictures as possible, which means you have thought about each one of them. If you are clicking thousands of images, then it is easy to find one good picture among them. I think that it is more important to click a few, with some good ones, because that requires self-reflection, reasoning and becoming more aware of our surroundings. If you are in contact with the reality around you, you use your capacity for observation.

SD: In terms of AI and your work as a professional photographer, what do you think?

GS: I see it as a potential problem, especially for the images used for advertising. Instead of taking models, professionals, you can create a set and people out of nothing and thus, for the advertising-sector I think that it is going to be a problem.

At the same time, the vast diffusion of digital images has created a greater sensibility among the people towards photography. Since the canons of beauty and ugliness have been turned upside down, some aspects of photography continue to need professionals. For example for making portraits. Sometimes persons come to me for portraits even if they can very well click their own pictures, because they are looking for a specific impact on the social media, so they want a professional.

SD: Have you also done photography for films or videos?

GS: I have done the still photography and backstage for some documentary films, to document everything that happens during the filming and in the backstage.

SD: Thanks Giorgio for taking the time to talk to me.

In The End

Giorgio Schirato's photo-exhibition titled "The Lessons of Water - 450 Years From Titian Till Today"  (Le Lezioni dell'Acqua - 450 Anni Da Tiziano Ad Oggi) is on at Palazzo Toaldi Capra in Schio till 13th September 2026 and can be visited on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, entry is free.

 

I loved his images of Venice, like this image above, where time seems to be standing still and it looks like a dreamscape. I also love his cityscapes where he captures fleeting moments that seem to open the world like a hyper-reality, letting us see things that we would not have seen.

All the images (except Georgio's) in this blogpost are from Giorgio Schirato's website and are protected by copyright. 

***** 

The Wandering Gods

When and how did the ancient humans decide to create the sacred spots where their Gods or prophets will live? With time, they decided to create elaborate homes for their Gods but sometimes, the Gods were left out in the open or travelled around with wandering holy-men and sometimes with the holy-women or were carried out of their homes periodically, in processions. I call these the wandering Gods.

This post focuses on some of the my experiences about the wandering Gods.

Most of my experiences of such events are linked with my travels in different parts of the world, especially in India. (Click on the images for bigger pictures)

Sacred Spots for Ancient Humans 

I think that ancient humans chose at least two different kinds of sacred spots.

(1) Some of those sacred spots were along the ancient pathways, for the travellers. At these spots, usually they did not build elaborate structures. Often, these were simple stone-towers or coloured clothes tied on or around trees. Sometimes these sites were close to the water sources.

For example, in Mongolia I saw the stone put together, often accompanied by flower trees and colourful scarfs, along the important pathways, criss-crossing its land. I was told that each stone in that place is sacred and you are prohibited from taking away even a single stone from those places.

 

I think that many persons have started believing in building such stone-towers. I saw them in a forest in Arizona (USA), as well as, in the river bed behind our home in Schio (Italy).

Similar to those stone-towers in Mongolia, are the tree shrines, that are so common in India. There was a small Hindu temple in central part of Mozambique, where I had seen a beautiful tree shrine around a huge Peeple tree. The image below has a tree shrine from a rural area in Madhya Pradesh (India).

 

(2) Other, more important sacred spots were places where the hunter-gatherers came together for big clan meetings. Often these were near rivers and streams or on the top of mountains. Prehistoric caves where rock art has been discovered were also chosen as sacred sites. These became sites of seasonal or periodic fairs and pilgrimages.

For example, the vast area around the confluence (Sangam) of Ganges and Yamuna rivers in Prayagraj (India) is visited by millions of persons during the 6 or 12 yearly Kumbh fair.

 

Specific Energy Fields For the Sacred Spots 

There is another aspect of the selection of sacred spots, about which my knowledge is limited - areas with auspicious or positive energy fields.

I have read that many ancient temples were built in areas that had a special kind of energy and thus, many of the more recent churches were built in their places when the old pagan religions were abandoned.

For example, I had read that the beautiful Santo Stefano church in Bologna (Italy) was built at the site of an older temple dedicated to Venus. People talk of the positive energy of this church. 

Some years ago, while on a walk in the forest behind the Bashistha temple in Guwahati (India) in India, I had met a Sadhu (ascetic) who had told me about the special energy that comes out of the ground and the rocks. I had put my hand on that spot but I was unable to feel any energy, which was there according to that Sadhu.

Perhaps, ancient humans, shamans and mystics are more open psychologically to such experiences of energy-fields and thus, chose specific sites for their prayer places. Or as the Sadhu had told me, "You have to learn to quieten your mind, then you can feel it." 

Gods Come Out of Their Abodes for a Procession

There is another sacred tradition that continues from old times - that of the Gods in procession. Sometimes, the icons and symbols of Gods are brought out of their temples or churches and are carried out in processions.

For example, when I lived in Bologna (Italy), I remember the annual procession in the evening, when the Madonna statue was taken out of the Bertalia church and carried out in a procession along the streets and parks.

 

Another example is from Delhi (India), where floats carrying statues and persons dressed as Gods travelled on floats for the annual Ram Lila in which the story of Ramayana was enacted.

 

I remember a more complex example of such procession in Cidade Alta in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), where the descendents of the slaves brought from Africa, who were forced to convert to Christianity, had merged their African Orisha Gods with the Christian saints.

 

In Himachal Pradesh (India), in the mountains around the town of Kullu, each mountain village has its own deity in a temple, many of whom come from older folk-traditions. Around the festival of Dusshera every year, all of them are carried out in procession to Kullu, where they live in temporary temples along with all the other deities.

In Karnataka (India), they have a tradition of men carrying in annual processions the Gods in their temples on their heads without holding it with their hands, while persons dressed as warriors carrying swords accompany them for protection.

 

Finally, in another example from Kerala (India) I remember the tradition of Theyyam in which there were men dressed as Gods, who invoked the Gods to descend in their bodies, to give benedictions and to answer questions.

Herders Moving Their Homes And Temples   

As hunter-gatherers were replaced by people owning cattle, they usually shifted their homes with the seasons, looking for grasslands and fodder for their cattle. They also took their Gods when they moved homes. 

I saw a group of herders in Mongolia, who had travelled from their villages to an area next to a lake, where they were setting up their home-tents and their temple.

 

Wandering Triptychs & Tripitaks

Travelling story-tellers, ascetics and mystics, was another group of people who carried sacred icons with them to the different communities. For the wandering Gods, sometimes, their sacred images were depicted on scrolls or portable temples, which could be folded and carried easily.  

The term Triptych (literally 3 tablets) comes from Latin and Greek, it is used frequently in conjunction with Christian sacred images. A triptych has 3 panels, one bigger central panel with two side panels which are attached to the central part like a door. Thus, the panels can be closed and it becomes a box, which can be carried around easily, similar to the idea of the wandering Gods.

The foldable Catholic Triptych in the image below is from Victoria & Albert Museum in London (UK). 

 

There is a similar term, Tripitak (3 boxes), used in Buddhism. It comes from Pali language, one of the languages of ancient India, which was used by Buddha for his preaching. It denotes an ancient Buddhist book containing all the  discourses of Gautam Buddha, which is divided into three main parts - Vinaypitak, Sutpitak and Dhammapitak, and was perhaps carried around by monks.

Conclusions

The idea of writing this post came from my musings on the similarities between the words "Triptych" and "Tripitak". I hope that you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Growing up in India, it is easy to get used to the idea of "God is every where" because in our daily life we can see people praying to cows, trees, mountains, rivers, all the time. At the same time, we can see the wandering Gods - men leading cows bedecked with flowers around the cities, children & adults dressed up as Gods asking for alms, people carrying sacred images or symbols in bowls and buckets to ask for alms on specific days of the weeks at red lights.

I want to mention 2 books that I had read in the 1980s, that have influenced my ideas about religions and gods - Jean M. Auel's series of books (Children of Earth series), starting with the "Clan of the Cave Bear" about the life in a Neanderthal community. Another book that helped me to understand how religions start and grow is "The Source" by James A. Michener in which he looks at different layers of history around a water-spring somewhere in Israel.

Not just about the origins of religions and ideas of Gods, these are great books and if you have not read them, try them.

*****

Life's Purpose and Seth's Mantra

Some decades ago, I was very interested in exploring ideas about death, afterlife, souls, etc. At that time, I had read a large number of books on this theme. Among those books, there were some by an American writer called Jane Roberts, which had a lasting impact on me.

Recently, by chance I found some of those old Jane Roberts books that I had bought during a stay in the USA in the early 1990s. They reminded me about that period of my life when I was utterly taken up by their ideas.

I also discovered that Jane had died in 1984 and they have an online Seth Centre, where you can learn about those books and they have a podcast on YouTube.

This post is about the Jane Roberts' books and about some of its enduring learnings for my life.

Finding the Old Books   

My wife said that the attic is full of useless stuff, and that I should go up and take a good look at it and decide if there is anything worth keeping, otherwise one day she will throw away everything. I know my wife, she does not make empty threats. She did throw away things from my cupboard, after telling me a couple of times to clean it.

So yesterday, I went to the attic. Our attic is underneath sloping roofs, so it is difficult to reach the stuff along the walls (roof is so low at the sides that I need to almost crawl to reach there). It was along one of the walls that I found a plastic bag full of old books, that some ten years ago, I had told myself that I will sort them and decide which ones to keep.

In that bag, I found some Jane Roberts' books, that brought back so many memories. One of the memory was of a cryptic motto, "Why did I Ask for This?", that I had as screensaver on my old computer and which was my mantra for dealing with any challenge.

Jane Roberts' Books About Seth

Jane Roberts and her husband Robert F. Butts had written 8 books in the 1980s - Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, Adventures in Consciousness, The Nature of the Psyche, The Seth Material, and 3 volumes of The Unknown reality.

Jane was a medium-writer, writing in a state of trance. She used to channel an "essence or a personality" called Seth, who was defined as "an intelligence no longer focused in physical reality, who has communicated with our world through writer Jane Roberts. During Roberts' trance-like states, Seth has revealed to her startling secrets about life, death, the universe beyond the five senses, and an amazing potential within us that is just waiting to be tapped."

My Ideas About Soul, Life and Afterlife

Like everyone, I had also wondered occasionally about the purpose of our lives - why do we have an conscience and how are we supposed to live our lives. I had lost my father when I was 21 and though I was not new to the idea of death, his sudden death had raised many questions in my mind about souls, what happens to it at death, and what, if anything, is afterlife.

When I was 16, I had once taken part in a seance at a neighbour's house. There were six of us. We had put our fingers on an upside-down empty glass on a chart on which boxes were drawn, with an alphabet in those boxes. We had held hands and invoked a spirit, asking it to come and help us find answers to our questions. I was very surprised when after each question, the glass had moved on the chart, pointing to a "yes" or a "no". I think that it was some kind of self-hypnotism that had made our fingers subtly move that glass, and it was not a real spirit inside it!

I had also tried looking at some of the religious books and their ideas about death. The biblical ideas of heaven and hell, followed by resurrection and restoration of the dead did not convince me. Similar Islamic ideas about angels of death judging my beliefs, etc. seemed equally unconvincing to me. I like some of the Hindu ideas in the Upanishads about our souls being a fragment of God and that after death, that soul reunites with the whole essence of god, but have many doubts about some other beliefs such as those of individual souls that keep their individual essence and may even take rebirth. 

Seth's Views About Purpose of Life

The Jane Roberts' books, touch on a wide variety of subjects such as - ways of looking at past lives, out of body experiences, astral projections, how probable realities combine to create our waking lives, how to explore our own unknown reality, and so on.

Reading these books, provoked a lot of reflections in me about souls and afterlives. Almost thirty years later, I can still recall my fascination with some of those ideas. However, I continue to be sceptical about survival of individual souls and their afterlife. I would rather think of a Seth as an expression of the life energy as a whole.

Seth's Mantra for Me 

Yet, there is one idea from these books that had a huge impact on me and in some ways continues to influence me even today. In one of the books, Seth talked about the purpose of life as the soul taking a life-form so that it could experience certain aspects of material life. It said that before taking birth, the soul decides what kinds of challenges it would like to face in that life. Thus, people being born with challenges or facing specific challenging events in their lives, are souls that need to experience those challenges in order to learn facing and overcoming them.

For me this idea means that everything that happens to me, good or bad, happens because I chose that as a challenge for my life. So every time, I face a challenge, I ask myself: Why did I choose this? What am I going to learn from it? What can I do to overcome it?

In Conclusion 

I tried to share this idea with my friends but it did not always work. For example, when a close friend broke his leg in an accident, and I went to see him at the hospital, I suggested that it might have been a challenge he had chosen for himself. He became very upset saying that it didn't make sense to him that he had chosen all that pain and suffering. 

However, I think that it is good way to face life. Giving up on a challenge and accepting defeat means that we did not give our soul a chance to learn from that experience.

For about 3 decades, I worked in international development programmes with marginalised communities in different countries of Asia, Africa and S. America. One of the approaches which I liked using in my work was called "emancipatory research", where the focus was on helping persons to look at their challenges as barriers and to facilitate them to collectively think of ways to emancipate themselves. I feel that in a way, the "emancipatory research" approach reflected the same basic idea of Seth.

*** 

Looking for Aditya Bhattacharya

Aditya Bhattacharya, son of the film-director Basu Bhattacharya (1934-97) and grandson of film-director Bimal Roy (1909-66) is known in India mainly for his first film as a director, Raakh (1989), which had Pankaj Kapoor, Aamir Khan and Supriya Pathak (image below).

Recently, I was searching for him for my book on Sonali Senroy Dasgupta (1928-2014), known for her love-story with the Italian film-maker Roberto Rossellini in the 1950s.

This post presents an overview about Aditya's life and works. Let me start by explaining why I started searching for him. (All the images are from internet)

Aditya's Sonali Connection

There was a big scandal in the 1950s when Sonali, wife of film-director Harisadhan Dasgupta, had left her husband and gone to live in Europe with Rossellini. Many books have been written about Rossellini.

However, Sonali was a very private person and conceded only few interviews during her life in the 1960s and 70s. Harisadhan lived in India and was not interviewed for the European books. Thus, both Sonali and Harisadhan are almost missing from those books.

Last year, I started to put together a book which could look at this story from the point of view of Sonali and Harisadhan, and their families. For this, I am looking for information about the texture of her days during 1980s-2000s, when the spotlights had moved away from her, leaving her to live in relative anonymity in Rome.

Thus, I thought that Aditya could have provided some information about this period since he had lived in Italy in the early 1990s. Sonali was his mother's cousin and I thought that while in Rome, he must have spent some time with his aunt and her family.

Through my search, I found Aditya and did write to him about Sonali but he did not reply to my message. However, since I had collected information about him, I felt that this would make for an interesting blogpost.

Aditya and His Family

He was born in Bombay in 1965. In a Times of India interview in 2001, he said that "an unstable home environment made him independent early in his life." He was referring to the troubled marriage between his parents, Basu Bhattacharya and Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, which had ended in a divorce. Aditya has two sisters, Chimmu and Anvesha. 

About the film-makers in his family, in an interview in 2007 he said: "I never got a chance to spend time with my grandfather. In fact, my first childhood memory is my grandfather’s death. I was three years old. I have few memories with my father too, as I’ve travelled a lot. I did not expect him to die in 1997. That’s the only regret I have, that I wasn’t there when he needed me and didn’t spend enough time with him. ... My father never shot his films on sets. He would shoot on real locations. Which means, he shot at home. So I would be in the middle of the shoot all the time. Anubhav, Avishkaar, Griha Pravesh and Aastha were shot inside our homes. I have worked with him in only on one film called Panchvati. It was shot in Nepal." (Something does not match here. If he was born in 1965, he would have been one year old in 1966 when Bimal Roy had died; perhaps, he was born earlier, may be in 1963)

In 1997, when his father had died, Aditya was busy with his first Italian film 'Senso Unico'. The film's editing and music were completed in India. He told in the 2021 interview: "Just 2 days earlier I had spoken to him on telephone while he was in the hospital. Finish your work before coming back to see me, he had told me categorically. After his death when I returned, I was unable to think of anything else."

Aditya's Early Works in Bombay

After finishing high school, Aditya decided that he did not wish university education and decided to become a photo-journalist.

In that period, Shyam Benegal asked him to play a role in his film 'Mandi' (1983), and film-magazines hailed him as "the most handsome actor". In the image below, he is on the left in the film's poster, behind Shabana Azmi.

Apart from a few small roles as an actor, he came out with his first film as a director (Raakh) in 1989, when he was only 25. About Aamir Khan, the hero of Raakh, he said: "Aamir and me were classmates in school. In 1983, we had done a short film called Paranoia. We, along with Mansoor Khan, also had a band together. So we were good friends. He did not want to be an actor, he was quite confused about what he wanted to do in life." In the image at the top, he is with Pankaj Kapoor on the sets of this film - Pankaj received a national award for it (the film had received 3 national awards).

During those early years, he was also visiting Prithvi Theatre, where he met Sanjana Kapoor, daughter of well-known Hindi film actor and producer, Shashi Kapoor. Aditya and Sanjana lived together for a few years, before getting married. The marriage lasted a few months and the couple divorced.

About this marriage, in his 2001 interview to ToI, he said: "I was around 18 or 19 when I started hanging around Prithvi (Theatre). Once Sanjana was asked to help with something, we hit it off, and that was the start, he reminisces. The initial spark led to a long term live-in relationship (six years) and later a relatively short-lived marriage. We were very young. We realised we were better a friends and decided to go our separate ways. But we never lost the respect, that caring for each other, at any time."

Aditya's family has many links to other well-known Bollywood film-families. For example, in 2023, his sister Chimmu Acharya's daughter Drisha married well-known actor Dharmendra's grandson and Sunny Deol's son Karan. (Dharmendra has always been close to the Bimal Roy family - his first film Bandini was with Roy and after Roy's death in 1966, he had helped the family by working free in a film called Chaitali). 

Aditya Leaves India and Arrives in Italy

Aditya came to Rome (Italy) in 1990. About his shift to Europe, he said in an interview: "Different people want different things in life. I never dreamt of being famous in Bollywood. I wanted to make films that would make my father and grandfather proud. ... It may sound strange but I wanted to make life difficult for myself ... So I went to Italy the next year and did odd jobs like being a waiter and later, a chef. I also did live editing of television shows in Sicily, a music video for an Italian band, ramp photography… I never called home for help. ... I always feared that I would become a useless guy if I did not struggle and earned things myself. It took me seven years to raise money to make a film. Going through everything there was important for me to become a fuller human being and a better film-maker."

In that same interview, he gave another possible reason for leaving India: "After Raakh, I did a film called Tapori with Mahendra Joshi (a person from Gujarati theatre background who was married to Aamir’s sister Nikhat). He died of a heart attack midway. He was a brilliant theatre person. I didn’t want to do anything for a while, and maybe that’s why I left India." 

About why did he settle in Italy, he said: "I was on my way to London, when I had a stopover in Italy for a week. I really liked the place and the people. So I thought it would be nice to write a story there. After making some money, I made a Italian film called Senso Unico in a place called Messina in Italy. No one had ever shot a film there. I fell in love with that place. To make a film in Italian language, in a place I didn’t know, to raise a lot of money and get a producer from London was a big thing for me. I was 31 years old then."

In another interview for an Italian newspaper in 2021, he had talked about watching Fellini's film '8 1/2' at the Film Institute in India and the huge impact that film had had on him and how he had managed to have a coffee with Fellini many years later while he was shooting his own film, 'Senso Unico'. In this interview he also spoke of leaving India: "In spite of the success of my first film, I was unhappy. I didn't want to follow the dictates of Bollywood and I didn't like the attention of some magazines ..."

Aditya in Messina, Sicily (Italy)

Soon after his Rome experience, in 1991 he shifted to the city of Messina in Sicily. Here, he married Maria Giovanna, a Sicilian, and they have two children. 

In 1995, after shifting to Messina, his name appeared in the programme of the Messina Film Festival as the director of a 1994 short-film "Fannan", about a local music band called Kunsertu. The festival booklet cites the following other works by him -  Indio (1991), Chootey Noì (1992), Contro (1993), Kunsertu Live Acireale (1994) and Mokorto (1994). Probably, these were all short films.

His Italian interview in 2021, also mentions a story about his connection to Messina: "Raakh was shown in a film-festival in Russia. In the festival he met a girl from Messina. Some months later, while in London for discussing some project, he had a stop-over in Rome, and he decided to visit Messina to meet her and some other local persons he had known. He was there for only one week but he knew that he was going to come back to that city. ... He lived there for seven years, working as a video-editor for a local TV station. Since then he goes back to Messina regularly." 

Aditya's Films & Work in Europe 

In 1995, he started working on the screen-play of an Indo-Italian film called Senso Unico (One Way), which was shot and released in 1997. Though this film was presented in some film festivals in 1999 and later became available on Amazon Prime in UK, it was never released in Italy due to some problems among its producers. This film was about Francesco (Lothaire Bluteau), the illustrator of comic books, who also repairs stolen bicycles, and who falls in love with Yasmin (Laila Rouass), an actress shooting a film in the city. The still from a meeting about the film shows Aditya in the left.

In 2005, he directed a Hindi film, Dubai Returned with Irfan Khan and Divya Dutta.

In 2007, he was involved as a producer in an Indo-Italian film, The Chase, with Vidyut Jammwal and Sidharth Malhotra. Some shooting for this film was done in Italy and it was being directed by Anubhav Sinha, but this film was stalled.

In 2009, he was planning to direct a film called Sandokan in Sicily but probably it was also stalled or the project did not take off.  

In 2012, he directed Bombay's Most Wanted (BMW) with Sarita Chaudhury, Jaaved Jafri, Samrat Chakrabarty, Chandan Roy Sanyal and Tannishtha Chatterjee. The film was about a New York journalist, making a film in Mumbai about 3 characters - an encounter specialist policeman, an informer and a bar dancer.

In 2012, he was also planning to make an English film with the actor Rana Daggubati, based in Los Angles titled A Momentary Lapse of Reason but this film did not work out.

It seems that BMW was his last film though recently (2025) he has been seen in UP in India, acting in a serial for his friend Sudhir Mishra, with whom he has already worked a few times. 

Conclusions

In 2025 Aditya is is 60-62 years old, his children are grown up. He continues to be active. For example, this year he is supposed to run a film-making course between October to December 2025 at the Catalunya School of Film-making in Spain, focusing on the South Asian diaspora.

Every time, persons make a decision which completely changes the direction of their lives, such as Aditya's decision to leave India and to start afresh in Italy and Spain, it is natural to wonder if they occasionally look back and ask themselves if they had taken another path in that moment, then how would be their life today.

Perhaps, Aditya also has such moments of "what if". However, in the 2007 interview, he had said, "I have no regrets. I have made films which have been appreciated. I have two beautiful kids. I have two homes in two parts of the world. And I have respect from my contemporaries."  

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An Artist and His Grand-Daughter

Recently, we had an unusual art exhibition in Schio (click on the pictures for a bigger view).

It presented the works of a hidden artist, someone who had a passion for art, even while he worked in a wool factory and as a house-painter, white-washing the homes. And it was organised by his grand-daughter Alice who had promised her grandfather Romano Benazzi that one day she will organise an art exhibition for him.

The exhibition was called, Nonno Raccontami Un Quadro (Grandpa, tell me a picture).

Romano Benazzi's Life-Story

Romano was born in a village near Ferrara (Italy) in 1941. During the second World War, his father died while fighting in Ukraine. Raised by a single mother, he started working in the fields at a young age. When he was sixteeen, under a Government programme, he came to spend some days with a family in Pieve Belvicino, a few kilometres north of Schio in north-east part of Italy.

A couple of years later, he came back to Pieve in the same programme, but this time a guest of another set of families. Both these experiences created in him strong links of family and friendship, and he fell in love with the beauty of this mountainous area.

He found work with a local firm engaged in painting houses. It was also the period when he started sketching with pencil and charcoal. He fell in love with a local girl, and thus found his wife Gina, who worked in a bar in Pieve. He also took on a second work, at the Lanerossi wool mills of Pieve, while they came to live in Magre area of Schio. They had two children, Guido and Daniela.

Over the years he continued with his passion for art, experimenting with different art mediums including oil paints. After his retirement, he devoted himself completely to his art, in spite of developing Parkinson disease (a disease which causes tremors in hands and difficulties in movements).

Romano lives in a house of elderly persons and even if Parkinson disease limits his manual capabilities, in fact sometimes he doesn't like the results of his efforts, but he still continues to be an artist. The image below has one of his recent sketches with charcoal, where frustrated by his lack of control over his hand movements and unhappy with the result, he covered it with charcoal.

Conclusions

In these pictures you can see some of his works. I was deeply touched by the idea of his grand-daughter Alice, daughter of his son Guido, to honour her grand-father's works and to organise this exhibition in collaboration with the Municipality of Schio.

Though Romano Benazzi remains an unknown painter, his works remain confined to the homes of his family and friends, it is important that they were celebrated by his family and community.

 

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Kimchi - Outsider's Gaze

Kimchi is a photo-exhibition on South Korea by Nadia Bagattin, which was held recently at Palazzo Toaldi Capra in Schio (Italy). The wide success of K-Pop, as well as, that of their TV serials, has created an international image and interest in South Korea. Nadia Bagattin's pictures in the Kimchi exhibition go behind that international image to look at the society, focusing especially on the contrasts between traditions and modernity.

I always find it interesting to understand how the outsiders look at countries and cultures, compared to the insiders. However, I have never been to S. Korea and I am not much informed about it, so to complete this exercise I should also look at works of some Korean photographers.

You can click on all the images in this write-up for a bigger view.

A Brief Talk with Nadia Bagattin About Kimchi Photo-Exhibition

While visiting the exhibition, I had a brief talk with Nadia Bagattin about her pictures in this exhibition, which is presented here.

Q:  You are a photographer for passion or professionally?

Nadia: For passion. I have studied multi-medial art at the Art Academy. I have been passionate about photography ever since I was a child and was gifted a camera.

Q: These days everyone clicks pictures everywhere, what is the meaning of being a photographer for you?

Nadia: My professor used to say that photographers are like painters, they paint with the light, to capture a moment, or an emotion. Everyone approaches it with their own ideas, so every photograph has a right to exist. Thus it does not matter, how many other pictures exist, for me it is a way to share my emotions from that moment.

Q: When you click pictures, what interests you more?

Nadia: I like to photograph persons, sometimes I am a very slow photographer. For example, if I arrive in a park, I would just sit there and look around for a long time, till there is something which strikes me emotionally and only then I click its picture.

Q: This was your third journey to South Korea. When you look back, was there anything different this time in terms of your photography, compared to your earlier visits?

Nadia: It was a very different experience The first time, I had gone very casually as a tourist, to meet some friends who had invited me. I didn't have any specific expectations. I used to listen to South Korean music and watch films and I had a vague idea of what I was going to find there. Later, I became passionate about it, I studied its history, now I have a better idea of its people and culture.

The first exhibition I had about S. Korea was last year, it had a more of a tourist kind of pictures - beautiful places that looked like picture postcards so that persons could feel attracted to visit the country. 

This exhibition is more visceral, I wanted to discover both sides, good and ugly of Korea. Like every country, it also has both, and I love them both.

Q: There are some pictures in the exhibition that look at the traditions, at dresses, at religious iconography and rituals. There are others that look at city life, such as the images of plastic toys in different colours.

Nadia: Yes, that is the aim of this exhibition, it is about contrasts, the two sides of the coin. Thus there is "pali-pali" (Korean way of saying "hurry up") side of Korean culture, as well as, the more traditional meditative side linked to zen, respectful of the nature and culture. So if you have noted these two sides, this is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Q: If you could choose three pictures from this exhibition, which represent a significant moment for you, which pictures would you select?

Nadia: Let me think.

The first picture that I would choose would be one of these children. It is from a city where they had few tourists. They were very surprised to see me in their city. They said "Hello" to me to show that they knew English.

The second can be the two elderly persons and their boat (left). They were retired persons and were doing volunteer work to clean the algae from this lake. When I was clicking this picture, the man became aware and he told me that both of them were very old but were still strong and active. I like these interactions with people.

The third would be that of the man making an offering to the turtle statue. The elderly man is making this offering underneath the turtle which represents the eternal life, it was his prayer for a long life.

Conclusions

So what does the choice of her three favourite images from the exhibition tells us about her as a photographer? I think that it denotes her attention and preference towards human-interaction. 

I love talking to artists and photographers to understand what motivates them to create. My exchange with Nadia Bagattin was short and yet interesting. You can also see some of her other pictures on her Instagram page.

I was struck by her description of photography as a painting with light. I had a somewhat similar idea when I had called my old photo-blog as "Chaya-Chitrakar" - the painter of shadows.

Kimchi exhibition can be visited at Palazzo Toaldi Capra in Schio till Sunday 27 July 2025.

   

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