Wednesday, October 31

Cheek Turning

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Alfred Stieglitz in 1909 observed that photographers, "Depict life in scraps and fragments." Some have argued that the painter constructs a concept while the photographer on the other hand discloses it. Today I think the photographic artist can both disclose and construct with decisive fragments. Hmmmm... constructive disclosure? Have I invented a term? Cool.

In fact we tend to find pieces of life. And in a way by revealing just that piece in its context, we disclose something unique. Something we saw. Here I noticed a raging saint in a place built upon the idea of peace, love and turning the other cheek. Even though this is a fragment from St. Peter's, the warrior has a role at this Basilica.

Photographers can wrench things from their context. Is that what's happening here? Or is this fearsome sword an important pat of the function of this place? Hmmmmm.... I wonder?

Tuesday, October 30

Rita's Birthday's On Halloween

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October 31st is my wife Rita’s birthday. I love her more today than ever. When I found these marbles in a Florentine shop, their sparkling luster reminded me so much of what a wonderful woman I married. There’s something magical about the durability yet seemingly accessible fragility of that substance along with the astonishingly delicate forms it can take.

Her love for this place of her ancestors plus the gem-like stone with which they did so much convinced me that I’d found this year’s birthday card.

Happy Birthday Honey.

Monday, October 29

Beneath The Surface, What?

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In the papal tombs under St. Peter’s you walk through corridors, tunnels actually, which open onto rooms. Some are behind glass, others behind ropes. Each is a display. And you see a surface like this where tiled arches hide caskets behind tiled frescoes of a number of papal bodies and perhaps in the center of a room is a sarcophagus like this displaying a grandly carved marble of a pope in death’s repose.

Is it grisly? Is it reverent? No, and no. At least not for me. What it was was a surface. But the speed of the people-line gave me no time to interpret or intuit what the reality must be if it looked like this. I’d hoped that if I made a photograph that captured that surface that later, like now, I’d find the time to penetrate this presentation. To work out what this Vatican culture’s message was.

But as I processed this image of Ambrosius on the wall overlooking one of the Piuses in marble there was too much information hidden away. Too much history between these two men that had vanished like a bridge gone into the mists. I have no idea why they lie so near to one another. What grouping this represents. I sense no pattern , only pomp and astonishing wealth. And again, I wonder if there is something here which will take me to the meaning of piety: or if this surface acts more as a curtain than a window to understanding what piety means?

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NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments-section below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page and enlarge upon them in the comments attachments to a day’s posting as the discussions unravel. Those comments begin here. To follow the thread chronologically start at October 7th.

Sunday, October 28

When To Sign A Photograph?
• An Essay

The last time I was in Rome…. Gosh that’s a cool sentence, it rings like a fork against fine crystal. “Twinnnnnnggggg!” But anyway, the last time I was in Rome we, like every other Roman tourist who ever lived, we visited St. Peter’s Bascilica at the Vatican.

And like every one of them, I took pictures. Here’s one, which I haven’t - and won't - sign.

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Why is that? Because this image was actually taken by the engineers at Canon Industries. What I brought to this image was their EOS 20D camera and a standard zoom lens. What I contributed was a lifetime of work that let me save enough money to take the Canon stuff and myself from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to a spot in the middle of the massive stone square in front of the Cathedral.

Photographers have wrestled over four things that a camera can do. They anguish over whether an image they “take” is objective or subjective. And they sweat over whether it demonstrates or illustrates.

Say what?

Lemme ‘splain by example. This picture I’ve shown you demonstrates what this view of St. Peter’s looked like on a mid, very sunny, October day. Except for earning the ticket and the camera paraphernalia, my only contribution was to point and click. And what I took was what people all around me were taking. It is an objective demonstration of what you would have seen if you stood there at that time. Get it? Objective (there is little if any of “me” in the picture I took) so while it demonstrates exactly what was in front of me, it fails to illustrate anything about the thoughts or feelings it invoked. I bring nothing to this.

Canon ‘took’ this picture; I did not ‘make’ it.


For me to sign it would be actually vulgar. Who am I to claim any credit for St. Peter’s Basilica? What I brought to this photograph was the mindless craft imbedded in a Canon camera and its lens. Now, I am not dumping upon craft, merely recognizing if for what it is in photography. For me to claim any sort of ownership for this image would be as if I opened up Shakespeare, photocopied a bunch of lines, and then grabbed credit for them. Just as that is the act of plagiarizing someone else’s ideas, claiming credit for a found image is also plagiarizing. And it doesn't matter if you are slavishly copying Renaissance architects or artists, or in some other case plagiarizing nature by displaying an un-processed snapshot of a sunset.

Notice I wrote, “un-processed.”

Artists process. They bring their ideas and feelings to the making of a photographic image. The picture they make, as opposed to pictures snap-shooters take, is a subjective illustration of them. And processing can happen before, during, and after a photograph is taken. Processing demands some intellectual intervention.

But let’s go back to the last time I was in Rome… “Twinnnnnnggggg!”

My first thought was to convey a sense of place: to communicate the classical grandeur and mass of this space in front of the seat of Catholicism. How to say, “Holy Basilica, Batman! This place is HUGE, OLD, and RICH!”

So I did this.

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See, here’s a triptych which taken together as a totality conveys through details what I couldn’t do in a single vista. Why couldn’t I? There were a zillion people all around me that seemed to be that many distractions from this place. Now they also could have been the subjects of a different idea, but it wasn’t the one that overwhelmed me. Plus the mid-day light is a photographer’s nightmare searing contrasts across marble, which no camera can hold throughout the tonal range. I also dealt with them by my points of view and processing.

Traditionally photography was governed by technical standards that made genuine achievement hard to accomplish. Unlike a poet or painter, I have a machine between my ideas and the thing I have ideas about. That machine’s the creature of strict engineering principles. Until the birth of digital enhancement, every action I took to offset one of the machine’s limitations, every one of those things (lenses, filters, formats, chemicals, papers, lighting, makeup, costuming, whatever…) resulted in corresponding intrusions upon the final result. Everything a photographer did to ‘make’ an image was a work-around that left its own shadow.

Great photographers came to master those enhancements in both pre-processing (getting the right equipment to the scene) and post-processing (usually in the darkroom, but sometimes later with razors and hand applied coloring… like that).

My triptych is essentially quite traditional. Through the careful selection of viewpoint, lens, aperture, speed, polarizing filter, and some digital darkroom enhancements I selected three full-frame images that together communicate my awe at the size, age, and wealth of this place. Together they form a subjective (my own) illustration of how St. Peter’s front stoop impressed me. That’s what I’m telling you with this trio. Hence it is no longer vulgar to sign it, indeed while I have difficulty signing any of the parts individually (for the same reasons I wouldn’t sign the first image I posted up there) the trio of parts is my statement, not Shakespeare’s not a Renaissance architect’s… Mine. Ted Byrne’s.

When an image conveys subjective ideas to illustrate a feeling or an idea (or both) it transcends craft… Goes beyond it. That’s art baby (um, whether it’s good art is never the artist’s call). There are still photographers who cannot believe that what they do in an instant can possibly be art. After all, how long did it take Michelangelo to release David from that block of marble?

Art isn’t measured in time put in. If it were then all you’d need to judge its existence would be a stopwatch, clock, or calendar. Many photographers seem to feel that art making is something pretentious. No, they argue that they aren't doing art at all, merely finding, recording, observing, witnessing, or measuring. And photographs can do all of those things in science, in court, and even on occasion in photojournalism. And they can do them better than any other representational craft.

But they can also illustrate ideas and feelings. Photographs can be as fictional as the works of Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, or Ingmar Bergman. In fact, Bergman used cameras exclusively to tell his feelings. No one objects to any of those doers of fiction signing their work.

In photography the subject always bleeds through. And when the subject matter seems to dominate the subtlety of the artist's layering of emotion or thought – it seems pretentious to find a signature on the photo, right? The subtler-seeming the photographer’s enhancements, the more likely the viewer is to mistake an image for an objective, point-and-shoot representation rather than a deeply personal subjective illustration of the meaning which the artist conveys. The fewer seams that show as a result of stunningly hard work the less likely the photographer is to get credit for the artiness of the work. Odd, I can think of no other area where that kind of rule applies.

Imagine if the smile on the prima ballerina were taken to indicate that her art were effortless and therefore banal. Imagine if the virtuosity of a violinist or the technique of a sculptor led people to conclude that they were incapable of communicating feeling, or thought!

So, do we stop here? Can a photographer only make signing-worthy photographs when they are in groups like my triptych? If that were so, then the only photographic artists would be some sort of time-lapse cinematographers. Which brings me to this image.

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Once again, I stood out there in front of St. Peter’s at the same time I both took the first image and when I made the triptych's pieces (notice the “took” versus “made”). But this time I wanted in one frame to create a piece of illustrative art. I wanted you to understand something about me, and how I began to look at St. Peter’s. I wanted to convey the rich color of medieval pomp. The contrast between the softness of flowing time (water) and the solidity of wealth (the immutable structures). I wanted your imagination to embrace one idea, “opulence” in contrast to another “piety”. And I wanted you to wonder if the two might really co-exist or if they were mutually exclusive. And if so, at this place… which one won?

And I wanted to capture your attention with technique, palette, and strict composition. But most importantly I wanted to create … to make… an image you could look through to find these ideas and feelings.

Now, it is quite arguable whether I succeeded. But it is not arguable that the final image is one that is unique to my mind at that time. It is a subjective illustration of the way my mind wrestled with those things. I did not plagiarize Shakespeare or that Renaissance architect with a click of my shutter. Canon did not take this image, I made it.

Which means I can sign it as proudly as any artist signs his work.

From their first years photographers wrestled with a feeling of artistic inferiority which painters in particular were happy to reinforce. One would think that photography’s claim to art making had been settled long ago. Yet I believe it’s a lingering sense of insufficiency which leads photographers to the conclusion that signing their work is either vain or coarse.

It is the making of photographs into illustrative art which proves that photographers have the same license to brand their creation as any other artist. Which explains why I sign most of the images I post here, including this third image I built from the last time I was in Rome… “Twinnnnnnggggg!”

Saturday, October 27

Fountain Of Thought


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Nine Disputable Facts Of Life

As a writer, I keep note of things that occur to me in discussions, when I’m reading, or when I’m just sitting and contemplating a fountain like this in the gardens of the Vlla D’Este (which I discussed yesterday). Looking at my notes, I found that I mulled over three-quarters of a dozen that trundled through my mind like those melodies which you just can’t stop humming.

So okay, let me get them out of my head and into yours. I have no idea whether they are right or wrong, good or bad – and I cannot promise they are all that original, but I hope you’ll agree, they each seem worth kicking about to see if anything worthwhile scurries out from under, eh?

1. Happiness cannot be caught by pursuing it.
2. Rights are not requirements.
3. In fact most rights are often more demanded than needed.
4. You can never be offended against your will.
5. No faith is reasonable, all faith is passionate.
6. Defining poverty as a virtue therefore makes wealth a vice.
7. Almost any act, no mater how dreadful, can be explained away by appealing to its consequences.
8. Before the nuclear missile we could wait for reason to catch up with passion.
9. Parenting and breeding are different things. One of them is hard.

Friday, October 26

Chilly?

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Beyond Rome in the hill town of Tivoli sits the Villa D’Este built by the Cardinal Ilppolito il d’Este in the mid 1500s. Travertine marble comes from Tivoli’s hills, its abundant tumbling water supplies some of Rome’s electricity. Tivoli's slopes are covered with olive orchards,vineyards and gardens.Some fine papers are manufactured there.

Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este (1509-1572), was the son of Alfonso I d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia and grandson (!) of Pope Alexander VI. He was appointed Governor of Tivoli by Pope Julius III. The villa's known for its opulently restored splendor and particularly for majestic gardens resplendent with enormous fountains that are entirely powered by natural water flows (no pumps). They are both an artistic and engineering amazement. Cardinals, unlike many hundreds of the priests who they ruled, quite apparently failed to take a vow of poverty, eh?

A central fountain (Of the Great Cup) has water issuing from a seemingly natural rock into a scrolling shell-like cup. Sadly the lighting was so awful in the mid afternoon of a searing day that there was no interesting way to picture the fountains. But the internet’s replete with photographic tours through the villa and its gardens.

Frankly though, it was the details of the place which flaunted the lavish wealth of the Cardinal/Prince of the Roman Church. Look at this one travertine detail on the fountain executed by the incomparable Bernini. See how the face looks more like an illustration from a modern comic book than a medieval hero? Look at the eyes and the very real expression. There’s nothing calm or idyllic – this guy is worried and I think damned chilly standing all those centuries naked in the water-logged air.

Thursday, October 25

Does Everytime Face A Vesuvius?

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Is there a Vesuvius always waiting just down the lane? Is there a force so potentially dreadful which some gentle Summer day might erupt over all or any of us? Does it wait over there looking mellow yet very very large?

On that August 29th in 79 AD this view was abruptly different. That mound at the end of the lane burst upon every plan, dream, and aspiration in Pompeii. It causes us to wonder whether there’s a force so potentially dreadful that some peaceful day can erupt all over any of us? Does it wait somewhere overlooked until it stops time? Should we concern ourselves with what we cannot possibly control?

And even if a personal Vesuvius lurks somewhere, does that lessen our responsibility to control what we can? To create, prosper, share, and succeed even in the shadow of inevitable things?

You wonder about that as you look down this ancient street at a primal force so massive, yet so wickedly calm.

GEEK STUFF: Canon EOS 20D, 10/03/07:4:38pm: Lens 17-85mm, Focal Length: 56mm, Exp 1/12@f/7.1, ISO 200, Metering Mode: Pattern, Expoure bias -1, Camera RAW

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NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments-section below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page and enlarge upon them in the comments attachments to a day’s posting as the discussions unravel. Those comments begin here. To follow the thread chronologically start at October 7th.

Wednesday, October 24

Temple Of Isis

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Multi flavored adoration was as much for sale just off of the streets of Pomeii as in any modern city. It was hard to walk more than a block without finding a different brand of faith. Is there something within us which simultaneously hunts for a divine solution to our challenges but demands that our personal solution be different from the suspiciously superstitious beliefs of the next guy?

The religious wars apparently flourished in Pompeii and exotic foreign faiths like this temple to the Egyptian diety Isis sat close to churches channeling the gods of the Romans and Greeks. Today in the West there seems to be a more consistent agreement upon which god to adore, but now the devil is in the details, eh?

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NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments-section below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page and enlarge upon them in the comments attachments to a day’s posting as the discussions unravel. Those comments begin here. To follow the thread chronologically start at October 7th.

Tuesday, October 23

Claudio Marcello's Font


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In 67 AD a massive earthquake jiggled the prosperous city of Pompeii, cracking walls and massive marble columns leaving debris everywhere and challenging its people and the Roman empire to begin a major cleanup and restoration job. It was still underway on the mid day of August 29, 79 AD. See the repairs to the walls in the back ground of this image, and the gouges in the columns?

On that day in August Pompeii’s name became inextricably linked with another name… Vesuvius. Along with the smaller city of Herculaneum, Pompeii was startled at first then buried in layers of silt which carefully preserved its history up until 79 AD.

Over the last three centuries excavators have revealed places like Claudio Marcello’s gift to his city of a public square.
>I know it was Claudio Marcello from this curiously preserved marble plaque with his name as its patron (note how the plaque’s carver ran out of room on the right). Marble work which matches this font is once again basking in the mid-day light about two thousand years after the still smoldering Vesuvius stored this vessel away for us to enjoy.

By the way, Vesuvius will erupt again, and if the winds are the same, Claudio Marcello's square will get packed away once more.

Sunday, October 21

Emotional Charge

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Have noticed how quickly we lose interest in a picture? Our attention even toward a great one that embodies a large slice of the artist's effort, ideas, personality, and feelings quickly becomes flat. And yet, if we return to it days, months, and even better, years later - somehow it glimmers again. I wonder about that because it doesn't seem to happen with other sorts of art which may hold our attention initially for longer, but once lost, rarely regain it.

Here's a Roman street scene. It is entirely typical of a life-moment within the walled city. See the street? The sidewalk? The walls, the ancient arched doorway? And the tiny shop spilling over with fruit and flowers? And packed in tight against it is a scooter. The elements are all there. Here's what Rome looks like. It looks different from Seattle, Davenport, Springfield, Atlanta, and Lancaster. The pieces add up to an explosively colorful moment. It is charged with the casual effort of the shop owner who assembled this atop the millennia-old streets, in front of the walls first built just as long ago. This is the outdoor day-time furniture of Rome in October. I suspect that it will strike your fancy today: become forgettable in moments, and yet... if you should return to it in a couple of years, or decades from now, I'm guessing it will be at least more interesting then.

Why is it that photographic images are like that? It's a mystery.

Saturday, October 20

Not Pompeii: Almost

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"Photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past (or place) that is unreal..." - Susan Sontag

Controlling the light is a battle that's normally lost to the traveler. In the case of Rome, obstacles made it impossible for me to arrive in the city much before 11am... HORROR CONTRASTS! Which means from the bleached out lemon light, I had to make lemonade.

Romans hang their laundry: an old-fashioned custom until you realize that their daily warm sun make clothes dryers a careless waste. Still, hanging lines with pennants of vivid clothes a-flutter are a charming time-trip to memories of cities where human wisps smudged the harsh lines of modern metal and crystal angles.

This scene of the lady-with-pearls was a perfect memory which I never had of a past-place except, damn! The mid-day sun which warmed her clothes was was dreadful. Which brings me to Pompeii (a place I’ll revisit here maybe next week).

I took some shots of two-millennia old walls from that recovered city. And as I looked at the Lady-Of-The-Laundry, Susan Sontag’s words careened through my head. “Hmmmmm,” I muttered. “What if…. What if this women was doing her daily hanging there, on the day before Vesuvius went, WOOOMP! What if the stone walls broke up that light? What if…..”

NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments-section below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page and enlarge upon them in the comments attachments to a day’s posting as the discussions unravel. Those comments begin here. To follow the thread chronologically start at October 7th.

Friday, October 19

Why Not A Post Card?

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How many galoots with Instamatics took this picture from this same bridge looking up the Tiber toward Adrian's Tomb? Why did I take it? I just saw a similarly shabby version of it in a ghastly written article in this month's Photoshop User Magazine. Do you realize how much I could have saved by just scanning that thing instead of schlepping off to Rome? I can think of no way to pull something original out of this cliché.

Can you? Hulp?

NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page. Those comments begin here. To follow the thread chronologically start at October 7th.

Thursday, October 18

A Bit Of Gandolfo

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Physicists tell us that bits are the universal medium of communication. And physicists might be the smartest scientists (at least that’s what they tell me). So how to communicate the Pope’s vacation palace at Gandolfo? How about in a bit? A tiny piece of a big field that combines the architectural grandeur, with the pomp and two men at the very foundation of Papal authority… two non-coms: a soldier and a priest.

A violinist friend of mine, an amateur musician, once found herself at a reception for present and past violinists of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She told me that she felt like a priest at the Vatican.

Well, here's that priest.

And here is one bit of wall, soldier and priest: a trio that condenses two millennia of heirarchy and grandeur into a narrative I can understand.

BTW, for you metaphor collectors, how about that slope?

Gandolfo, Italy. 10/01/07:11:40pm

NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the daily comments below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page. Those Italian comments begin here.

Wednesday, October 17

2007 Award Winner - Super Sorprese & Trip Notes

Note: Accepted as one of theworld's finest People Images of 2007 for Canon POTN Book to be published in the Fall of 2008.

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Shocked: Tessio watched Umberte make the signal.

Rome, Italy. 10/01/07:12:09pm

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BACK-STORY: As some of you know, Rita and I travelled to Italy with Beth and Chris Herr, October 1 - 14. The first week we were based in the Albian Hills south east of Rome, the second week we were in an apartment along the Arno River in Florence. We took day trips to Tivoli, Pompeii, Spoletto, Sienna, and Assisi, and a part of Naples. I took approximately 18 gigs + of RAW images. Rita took another 2 gigs of jpgs. At first I backed up the images each day on: my MacBookPro, a portable external HD, and on an iPod. However on October 8, the MacBook crashed and from there we kept everything on Compact Flash cards. No images were lost.

On the evening of October 8, master photographer Andreas Mannessinger & Irene drove down from Vienna to join us in Florence for wonderful dinner at the Nanamuta Restaurant, and the next morning we met at Sunrise to begin a mano-a-mano shoot at the Duomo and then worked our way through the winding ancient streets to the Ponte Vecchio (see my posting for October 7, the day before the MacBook crashed).

I'm slowly working my way through the images in chronological order (with the one exception of October 7) - and it's so much like reliving the trip and its ideas and feelings. I hope you'll enjoy this after-the-fact journaling as I match my notes (I always carry a small spiral bound notebook) to the pictures. Eventually we'll get to the results of the photo-shoot with Andreas (note, he's already posted a spectacular image from that morning - that includes a sort of portrait of me at work - which you'll find by clicking here.).

A last point: In a couple of days, I'll give you the names and contact information for the places we stayed and our hosts (along with pictures). Both the Byrnes and the Herrs will recommend them enthusiastically.

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NOTE: You will also often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the daily comments below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page. Those Italian comments begin here.

Tuesday, October 16

Living With Dead

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When you’re young they say that the days go on forever and death’s little more than a rumor at the end of the road.

In southern Italy’s small towns they paste wall banners memorializing anniversaries of the passing of loved ones.

NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to today's image here on the home page. Those comments begin here.

Monday, October 15

Wall Whisper

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Susan Sontag wrote, “Photographs (can) give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal.” She goes on to suggest that photographs are, “a way of certifying experience.”

The walls of Castle Gondolfo reflect both the implacable force that Urban VIII breathed into them in 1624, and the current fashion of genteel seediness which coats their façades in crackling layers. From the image we can we grasp either the enormity of the past power of the men who peered down from this window upon Lake Albano, or the situation of its current tenant. Is this a photograph of a past, a present, or a future?

As I leaned against the afternoon warmth of this wall, it was like a rock. And see the etchings in the stone window frame? Beneath your fingers they’re as crisp as yesterday, the artisan’s message left there at the end of a day some four centuries ago.

Odd how imagination’s so one-way. Beneath my fingertips I could feel what his hand felt as it wiped across this surface. And I can picture him packing tools, walking a cart half a block to the town square, getting wine, and wondering where his next job would take him.

I can imagine all of that, yet I cannot image the guy who might come upon this little story in 2507, yet he will know as much about me as I do about the man who made Urban VIII’s window.

We are all something's history.

NOTE: You will often find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments below both as I add onto them and as you prompt my memory. I'll try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to the image here on the main site. Those comments begin here.

Sunday, October 14

Look! Up there... Castel Gandolfo.

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NOTE: You will find in-depth descriptions of this Italian visit among the comments below. I shall try to restrict my thoughts exclusively to the image here on the main site.

Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's vacation residence, occupies a height in the Alban Hills overlooking Lake Albano about 25 miles South-East of Rome. The lake was formed when an ancient volcanic mountain collapsed. The castle was made part of the few remaining Papal holdings when the ancient power of the Popes in Italy collapsed. It sits amidst a small town in Lazio. Gandolfo shows the wear of time and while a patina of grandeur peeks through it seems to present His Holiness with the same challenge faced by all owners of old homes... The word "money-pit" resonates, eh?

I suppose the Pope is faced with a dilemma. Should he let the facade, at least, deteriorate so as not to seem to be detouring the gifts of the faithful toward maintaining an ancient opulence while millions go hungry or die from preventable diseases (diarrhea comes to mind)? Or should he restore the place to its former glory to show the significant might and influence of the Roman Church? Not to decide it to decide, eh?

Sunday, October 7

This Place Looks Like This

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Hey! Here's a fast postcard to all of you from Firenze, Italy in the pre-dawn of this AM.

Wish you were here...


Ted

This image is posted from our apartments in Florence on the evening of my Mano-A-Mano photo shoot with Andreas Manessinger. I've only quickly had time to look at the four gigs of shots I took at the Duomo and then down the ancient streets to the Ponte Vecchio at sunrise this morning. I'll probably not get back to these for weeks. But it looks as if I have an image or two that are competitive.



This is the 365th posting to ImageFiction!!!! So? Is this really the first anniversary, or just an indication that I needed a day off here and there over the past year? Hmmmm.....