Hello, I’m Tao.

This is a very personal project—yes there’s Yoko whom I have been living and working with for the past 19 years, always helping me to say NO other than YES or URRRR or HMMMM to things I’m not sure about—yet it is still personal, due to the fact that I am the one holding up the camera, pressing the shutter button within a certain 1/250 or 1/4000 of a second, by which a photo is taken.

No matter how many people are taking how many photos how frequently today, these moments are still special to me.

By no means I’m a good photographer: I have only one camera, one lens (which came with the camera) and I seldom, if not never, wait in the bush for The Moment to come. And I don’t drive a car. I just walk. A lot.

During the 11 years living in this Italian pre-alps village called Pasturo, one thing I’ve got to know is that, nature is generous enough to offer the same amount of—infinity—to someone even like me. Believe or not, you just need to be there, no matter you move or you don’t move or you move very slowly and carefully, everything comes to you anyway. In nature, every moment is The Moment.

When enough moments are captured and stored, stories appear. So Yoko and I decided to select a couple of photos, and try to tell a story every so often.

We hope you like it. ∎

ISSUE 3, September 2025

Fireflies and Glowworms

We know there are fireflies around here. We mark the date of the first sighting every year on the calendar. They are sparks in the woods, on the meadows, along the streams. One or two twinkling into our living room from the bedroom window. We turn off the light.

But this year, we saw something else. On one unusually hot day in June, after dinner, we got on our bikes, rode to a place where a group of Japanese honeysuckle blooming fiercely, hoping to see some elephant hawk moths. And there they are! The relentless, floating pinky shades. Then we noticed the fireflies starting to come out, dancing everywhere. The sparks we used to know. A bit more though. Oh sorry, a lot more… Wait, the whole world started to blink! What was that?! It wasn’t just dance… It was a rave party!

We went to bed at two in the morning every night for about two weeks. Such a long dream.