Ezio Gianni Murzi

From the Outside In: My Photographic Journey

Born into a family of generations of seafarers and Navy officers, I was the only one to take a different path, studying medicine and becoming a doctor. The sea and photography have always been enduring passions alongside my medical career. After retirement, I began pursuing photography more seriously, developing my documentary approach through workshops led by Anush Babajanyan of VII Photo Agency, John Stanmeyer of National Geographic, and Salwan Georges of The Washington Post.

For years, my photographic gaze was directed outward. I focused on people, social contexts, and the stories of others, guided by a responsibility to represent their lives honestly and preserve their complexity. I sought to go beyond appearances without reducing people to simple narratives. Yet, behind the camera, I remained an observer, able to explore the vulnerability of others without necessarily exposing my own.

Gradually, I began questioning this distance. I realised that the subjects closest to me—affection, fragility, fear, and personal memory—were often absent from my work. My unpublished project on my eldest brother marked an important turning point, bringing photography into a deeply personal relationship and challenging the separation between observing and participating.

Self-portraiture and the return to my family home after twenty-three years became further steps in this exploration. The camera acquired a different function: not simply to document what was before me, but to investigate my own history and the emotional traces left by time. Photography became a form of visual diary, allowing memories, present experiences, and unresolved questions to coexist.

Today, my practice moves between documentary observation and personal investigation. I remain interested in people's lives and relationships, but increasingly in what lies beneath the visible story: what gestures reveal, what memories preserve, and what remains unresolved. I seek images that leave room for ambiguity rather than offer easy conclusions.

My journey is not a departure from documentary photography, but an expansion of it. I am learning to acknowledge my own presence within the stories I tell, accepting that the act of looking also reveals something about the person behind the camera. Photography has become a way of exploring not only the world around me, but also my place within it.

I am drawn to photography that explores human emotions, particularly memory, the passage of time, and the persistence of the past in our present lives. In my fanzine *Tu sei come eri, tutto è come era* (“You Are as You Were, Everything Is as It Was”), I explore the return to my family home after twenty-three years. Through this encounter with a familiar place, I reflect on the relationship between memory and identity, on what time changes and what seems to remain untouched.

Increasingly, I find that I cannot remain behind the camera. I feel the need to enter the frame and become part of the story myself. Photography is becoming a visual diary, a way to confront personal memories and emotions that are difficult to express in words. This fanzine represents that shift: from documenting the world outside me to exploring how places, memories, and the passage of time continue to shape who I am.

A photograph feels distinctly mine when it goes beyond documenting what I see and expresses something I feel. I am drawn to human presence, emotional complexity, and the traces that time leaves on people and places. I prefer images that leave room for ambiguity rather than explain everything, allowing personal stories and universal emotions to coexist. The camera becomes a tool for exploring memory, identity, and the relationship between past and present. What makes a photograph mine is this tension between observing and participating, between the world as it appears and the emotions it awakens in me.

Participating to a workshop in Istanbul in 2018 run by Anush Babajanyan and John Stanmeyer, and later workshops run by Diambra Mariani, greatly contributed to shape my visual characteristic.

All these are essential items of a photograph, however, at the end, I photograph with my heart. My emotions let me create an image that conveys a human sentiment of joy or loss.

I was in Yerevan, Armenia, photographing carpets that had survived the violence of March 1920 in Shushi, as part of my project *Textile Memories: Weaving the Homeland*. Hasmik and her cousin, descendants of the family that had owned the carpets, posed beside them. I was not satisfied with the images, so I asked Hasmik to remove her glasses. Her gaze, intensely pained, changed the way I saw the photograph.

These carpets had belonged to Hasmik's family before violence forced history to take a different course. They were tangible links to the family's past, to their home in Shushi and to a heritage passed down through generations. Standing beside them, Hasmik was not simply a model posing with historical objects; she was a descendant of the people whose lives those carpets had accompanied. Her gaze made me think about how the family's history might continue to shape her, even though she had not experienced those events herself.

The photograph brought together two forms of inheritance: the carpets, which had physically survived the violence, and Hasmik, who carried the family's connection to its past into the present. Their relationship became the heart of the image. The carpets preserved the material traces of a lost home; Hasmik's presence connected those traces to a living family. I began to understand memory as something that passes not only through stories, but also through objects, relationships, and a sense of belonging. It can become part of who we are, even when the events that shaped it happened long before we were born.

I recognised the moment when Hasmik removed her glasses and I saw the pain in her gaze. Until then, the photographs had felt incomplete. Suddenly, her expression changed my understanding of the scene. Beside her were the carpets that had survived the violence of March 1920 in Shushi, once belonging to her own family. Their presence connected her to a history inherited rather than personally experienced.

What made the frame special was the unexpected connection between her gaze and the carpets. The carpets were tangible witnesses to the family's past; Hasmik's expression made me reflect on how that past might continue to live in the present. I could not know exactly what she was feeling, but the encounter made me think about the way family history, loss, and belonging can pass between generations. For a moment, the photograph became more than a record of a person and an object: it brought the past and the present into the same frame.

For me, making a photograph is a continuous process of observing and adjusting. The photographer's eye is constantly reading the composition, colours, light, and atmosphere, guiding small movements by the camera, the subject, or the photographer. These decisions often happen intuitively and very quickly, until the image begins to feel right.

In this photograph, the essential choice was not simply how to frame Hasmik and the carpets, but how to bring their relationship into focus. Asking her to remove her glasses was a small intervention that profoundly changed the emotional intensity of the image. Her gaze became more direct, creating a human counterpoint to the carpets' intricate patterns and historical weight. The composition brought together a living face and objects carrying the family's past, while the atmosphere of the encounter allowed the connection between them to emerge. The decisive moment came when these elements felt coherent—not just visually, but emotionally.

I would like viewers to reflect on how memory survives beyond the lives of those who directly experienced an event, and how it becomes part of the identity of future generations. The carpets carry the physical traces of a family's history, while Hasmik's presence connects that history to the present. Her gaze invites us to consider what we inherit from our ancestors, even when we have not personally experienced their suffering or loss.

Ultimately, I hope the photograph raises a question: can we ever truly leave the past behind, or does it continue to live within us, shaping our sense of who we are and where we belong? For me, the image is about the fragile but enduring bond between family, memory, and homeland.

My years as a doctor profoundly shaped the way I look at people. In my clinic, I learned that treating someone meant more than understanding symptoms or making a diagnosis. It meant listening to their stories, recognising their fears, and understanding what gave them hope or made them happy. Every patient taught me something about human vulnerability and the complexity of individual lives.

I bring the same attitude to photography. I take time to get to know the people I photograph, to listen rather than simply observe, and to understand something of their inner world. Photography has become another way of practising this kind of attention. It allows me to explore what lies beyond appearances and to recognise, in the lives of others, emotions and experiences that connect us all.

A recurring thread in my work is the encounter between human vulnerability and dignity. My medical background and my experience of humanitarian contexts have taught me to look beyond circumstances and recognise the person behind every story. Whether I photograph people facing hardship, families preserving their memories, or intimate moments of everyday life, I try to approach each subject with empathy, curiosity, and respect.

Ultimately, I hope my photographs communicate a simple but essential message: every human being deserves to be seen, heard, and treated with dignity. I do not seek to speak on behalf of the people I photograph, but to create images that acknowledge their complexity and humanity, inviting viewers to look beyond differences and recognise something of themselves in others.

Initially, my reaction was that of disbelief, as I thought there was a mistake.

I am currently working to develop *Textile Memories: Weaving the Homeland* into a book that brings together photography, family histories, and the story of Armenian carpets that have survived violence, displacement, and the passage of time. I want these images and stories to help preserve a history that deserves to be recognised and passed on to future generations.

Beyond the book itself, I hope the project can contribute to a wider understanding of how cultural heritage, memory, and identity are intertwined. I believe that acknowledging historical facts and listening to the experiences of others are essential steps toward reconciliation. As a photographer, I cannot create peace, but I can help make stories visible, encourage dialogue, and contribute, in my own way, to the hope of a more lasting peace.