Elena Ferrante: ‘Recently I found a photograph of myself that I liked’

The woman in the frame doesn’t match the one in my mind

I am one of those people who never like the way they look in photographs or videos. As soon as I realise that a friend or relative is pointing a phone at me, I turn my back, cover my face with my hands, and say, “No, I’ll look bad, stop it, I’m not photogenic.” But some time ago I happened to find a photo of myself at 17, and I liked it so much that – extraordinarily – I had it framed and put it on display on a bookshelf. Everyone – friends, relatives – who saw it was puzzled: how pretty you look, is that really you? Even a person who’s known me for decades and is very fond of me said, after praising the image, “But to tell you the truth, I don’t think you really looked like that.”

Eventually, I, too, had to admit that I liked this picture precisely because I didn’t at all resemble the image I usually had of myself. Was it possible that I had had those features only at 17, at the end of a painful adolescence (like almost every adolescence)? Hard to say. When I think about that year, it doesn’t seem to me that I was especially satisfied with myself, or with my appearance, something that the photo would have justified. Rather, I had to admit that at the time the image hadn’t particularly struck me – maybe I considered it just one of the many I would happily have torn up. Or probably I hadn’t disliked the photo, but, because I didn’t have a high opinion of myself, I hadn’t recognised myself and had immediately forgotten it.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘I don’t believe people who swear they’re not the jealous type’

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