Brilla Sempre, Matteo de Mayda, published by Witty Books

With Matteo de Mayda and Daria Scolamacchia.

Brilla Sempre (Keep Shining) is a tribute by Matteo de Mayda to the places where his mother worked as a cleaner. The book opens with these words: “My mother passed away on March 28, 2023, after eighteen years of illness. Her name was Serenella. On her identity card she was listed as a ‘cleaner,’ because she always cleaned apartment blocks, staircases, courtyards, and parking lots in Treviso.”

These are spaces of passage that the author chose to ennoble through his photographic practice, as if undertaking an intimate pilgrimage through places imbued with a sacred quality. The project unfolds as a process of mourning shaped through encounters with building managers and residents. Through his work, de Mayda recounts his mother’s profession using images that are objective and rigorously composed, devoid of human presence, evoking care, labor, and absence. The photographs invite the viewer to observe ordinary places and to recognize the human relationships that pass through them.In contrast to the apparent detachment of the images, the book’s cover features a text containing an intimate recollection of the life shared by a mother and her son. Brilla Sempre is a tribute that reflects on work, memory, and a way of responding to grief without sentimentality or gratuitous compassion. Artist Gian Maria Tosatti describes it as “a small monument to the fragile permanence of what we hold most dear.”