Photo of the Month, January 2026.
Column curated by Dario Sequi.
Each month, in Appunti di Famiglia, one photograph will help us tell the story of Sardinia from another angle. Not to add an image to the story, but to slow it down. Some places do not ask to be explained quickly. They ask for a gaze that knows how to stay. That is why we wanted Dario Sequi’s perspective in this series: because Sardinia cannot be told through a single voice, or from a single distance. It also needs eyes that can read light, wind, waiting, and matter. This first Photo of the Month brings us before Mangiabarche Lighthouse, located in south-western Sardinia, off the north-western coast of the island of Sant’Antioco, within the municipality of Calasetta. Not as a backdrop. As a presence.
Not every photograph is taken.
Some have to be waited for.
Mangiabarche, for me, is one of those places you make an appointment with.
I do not go there to take an image away.
I go back to see whether, this time too, it will choose to reveal itself.
There are days when the sky, cleared by the Mistral or the Tramontana, opens up.
The sea slows down.
Light enters the water and draws out its brightest colours.
In those moments the lighthouse changes tone.
It wears its light and dark stripes with an almost severe precision.
It seems to be standing there, watching over everything.
Almost like the sea’s lifeguard.
Then there are the days of hard wind.
The days when the coast is lashed and the water offers no respite.
That is when Mangiabarche reveals another character.
It is no longer only a presence.
It becomes resistance.
The waves burst against it.
The water rises, opens in white, then falls back.
The sea raises its voice.
It remains.
That is the part that interests me most.
Not the postcard image.
But the point where a place stops being beautiful and begins to be true.
During a storm surge, the lighthouse no longer seems like a simple signal.
It feels like an outpost.
Almost like a guardian trying to defend the line between land and sea.
These are two opposite moments.
But not opposing ones.
They complete each other.
Calm reveals form.
Wind measures character.
This photograph of Mangiabarche Lighthouse is born there.
Inside that tension.
When I arrive as a photographer, I already know that haste is of little use.
Shooting in bursts, in front of places like this, is often a way of staying on the surface.
I prefer to wait.
To wait for the sea to find its rhythm.
For the wave to rise where it has to rise.
For the lighthouse to stop being a subject and return to being a presence.
To me, this is a form of respect.
For the place.
For time.
For what an image can hold, but only if you do not force it.
Maybe that is also why I chose this photograph for January.
January does not ask for noise.
It asks for structure.
It is a month that puts things to the test.
And whatever remains standing means something different.
Mangiabarche, under the wind, speaks of this too.
I keep going back.
Because each time the sea changes.
The light changes.
I change too.
So I wait.
Not for the perfect moment.
For the true one.
In front of certain places, you do not decide very much.
You stay.
You watch.
Then, perhaps, their moment arrives.
And when it does, you realise that you have not only held an image still.
You have listened to a place.
Dario Sequi
The author
Dario Sequi curates the "Photo of the Month" column for Family's Notes. A photographer and narrator of places, each month he selects a single image and accompanies it with a personal reading shaped by observation, memory and attention to place. Family's Notes is the editorial journal of FA Travel, a MICE and luxury travel house based in Cagliari, Sardinia.