Yari Ghidone Need for freedom BY MARTA MANZONI PHOTOS YARI GHIDONE
Yari Ghidone is a modern nomad. He is hungry for real, natural, primordial things. He lives outside social conventions, far from those metropolises and contemporary prisons where bourgeois conformism becomes a single thought, an ontology of homologation. Where it counts to appear, rather than to be. Yari Ghidone is a stray by nature, a wanderer by choice. His story it is the story of those who experienced new balances, at peace with themselves. His passion for photography was born in the second year of high school, in 2008, when he also started cycling in Turin. In 2014 he travelled to Corsica for the first time: there his love for freedom was born and he decided the life he wanted to live. In 2016 he rented his first van and, after two days, realized he wanted to live in that same van. So, the following year, he bought a van, sorry, his house. More than 1400 days have passed since then, strictly into the wild.
I went for it. There must be a reason why I'm still here after four years: evidently I had clear ideas. I learned many things along the way, how to face the winter and manage certain situations that are a bit extreme. From the outside it all looks beautiful while in reality there are many shades. This is why I also show when I drain the toilet or stay for a week in the flood and the solar panels do not work. At first I didn't have the money to buy the van: thirty thousand euros is an important amount of money. But I had been renting a house in the mountains for years, so I thought about everything I had spent on rent and that it hadn't left anything in my hand, and I decided. I wanted to be able to move my house where I wanted. I bought a third of the van immediately, with little savings. Then for a year and a half I continued to work in my uncle's comic shop in Turin, sleeping in the mountains around the city. In 2018 the shop closed and in the meantime the van became a job.
Where does this need for freedom come from?
Having my home everywhere: by the sea, on the mountains. Being in contact with nature, every day, not just on weekends. Working on the edge of a frozen lake is simply priceless. Why do you do that? Just to encourage peo-
ple to do something simple and beautiful. Travel does not have to be expensive or in luxury hotels, you can experience important emotions being in contact with nature, spending little. At first I was not prepared, I didn't really know what awaited me, but it was what I wanted, and
What does travelling mean to you? Right now,
as we speak, it's February, I'm twenty meters from the sea, in Sardinia, and I'm preparing a pasta sauce, in short sleeves. Waking up surrounded by nature is synonymous with freedom.
132
