I photograph what happens, not what should happen

My name is Rosario Spadaro. I was born and I live in Catania, at the foot of Etna, and I have been photographing weddings for sixteen years — more than six hundred of them, across Sicily, mainland Italy and abroad.

My work is documentary. That word gets used loosely, so here is what it means in practice: I do not direct your day, I do not stop the ceremony to repeat a moment, and I do not ask your family to pretend to laugh. I stay close, I read the room, and I photograph the ten seconds before and after everyone else lowers their camera.

The only part of the day I do guide is the couple session, and even then it lasts twenty to thirty minutes: I take you somewhere with good light, give you something to do rather than a pose to hold, and get out of the way.

Working on my own island is my advantage. I know which courtyard in Ortigia is empty at seven in the evening, how the wind behaves on Capo Milazzo, what happens to the colour of the salt pans in Trapani twenty minutes before sunset, and which parish priests will let me stand where I need to stand.

My awarded Italian portfolio, with full wedding stories, lives at rosariospadaro.com. This site exists for couples travelling to Sicily from abroad.