Wish it Was a Coming Out is an ongoing long-term project portraying LGBTQIA+ senior citizens in Italy. For many of the people photographed, the shifts in legislation experienced over the past decades have directly impacted their lives and individual human rights.
The history of LGBTQIA+ rights in Italy is marked by significant social, cultural, and legal turbulence. Albeit shifts towards greater acceptance and protection for LGBTQIA+ people in the early 21st century, the political rise of far-right and conservative parties has massively regressed the state of protection. As recently as 2021, Italy’s far-right parties voted against a law that would have made violence against LGBTQIA+ a hate crime.
Wish it Was a Coming Out works to remedy the silence that many of those portrayed were forced to carry throughout their lives, starting from the author’s own autobiographical story. Ianniello, an openly lesbian woman, has never been able to come out to her grandmothers. From this missed coming out stems the idea of initiating an intergenerational dialogue—with people close to her in terms of sexual orientation, and to her grandparents in terms of age. The result is precisely that explicit affirmation of the self which gives the work its title. Coming out thus becomes a symbol of love—the kind of love that drives one to speak out and to no longer fear silence, taboos, and all that remains unspoken.
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