EDITORIAL Stefano Padovani
Let’s abandon the ship before it sinks... We’re in the hands of crazed commanders. Skilled, capable rulers are nowhere to be found, and so are guiding lights, so we end up being thrown about by the waves, without a harbour to head to for our safety. Ideologies are now a thing of the past. Happiness is feeling nice and snug in a warm bubble of illusory happiness. We feed on artificially modified food and on virtual culture; last but not least, we use chats to find love. We can’t complain about our governments and their false promises of huge changes when we in the first place continue to accept and actively look for things and systems that are patently fake. We prefer believing that all that counts is wealth, because real values have lost their meaning to us. We don’t feel the love for our family, our children and all the people that surrounds us anymore. We find it difficult to distinguish good from evil because good is hard to find and so it’s increasingly difficult to understand. We hide behind righteousness and do-goodery to clear our conscience. Hypocrisy is the commonest feature by now. We talk of racism and prejudice as if they had nothing to do with us, yet when confronted with people who share our views of the world we act as fanatic monsters, and this also happens when the shared values are healthy and positive. Globalization is a reality: we can enter the homes of people who live thousands of miles away from us, yet we’re so far apart from each other emotionally that we don’t even realize it. We expect religion, politics or war to bring about change, but it can only start from within ourselves. All changes, even the smallest one, require us to be brave and to really want them, and sometimes they are necessary, even though they force us to leave our comfort zone for something that might turn up to be worse that what we’ve left behind. But after all what’s life without thrills, without risks, without uncertainties? When I decided to change course and enter the world of publishing, back in 2015, they told me I was crazy. After thirty-seven years in fashion photography, why on earth would I want to take on such a huge risk just now that even the printed media giants were going to the dogs? Maybe because I needed to turn my life around, and because I was looking for something to make me feel alive again, something that I could put my heart and soul into. Today Fashink has reached its tenth issue and is an established reality, yet I will never give up seeing every day as an ever-new opportunity for improving myself and for bringing a message of change to all our readers
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Stefano Padovani 8