Loved this!!
You can see more of Richard's work over on his website.
Sardines ...
A high of 34 celsius is expected here in Antwerp today. It started early and was already 29 when I biked to the supermarket at 9am. It's lovely, I'm not going to complain ... It's just very. very. hot. for this crowded little city with the massive European highway passing through it.
Thunderstorms should crash over us tonight or tomorrow, and a 10 degree drop in temperature is expected.
It's summer. It's like that. Sometimes we have one.
When I have time, the search for exhibition photographs goes on ... and along the way I find shots like this one, taken in Istanbul. It still makes me smile. I called it sardines.
Sometimes ...
Sometimes, even I'm surprised by what I find in my photographs.
I'm playing with frames and so I polaroided it but otherwise the image is almost untouched.
Colours ...
There are two devices which can help the sculptor to judge his work: one is not to see it for a while. The other... is to look at his work through spectacles which will change its color and magnify or diminish it, so as to disguise it somehow to his eye, and make it look as though it were the work of another.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1590 -1680
As I work though my photo folders, putting together a collection of work for the exhibition, I began to see I have this thing about colour but it's not limited to one colour ... it seems that each place has had its own colour for me.
Genova is, for me, predominately gold/yellow/orange. Naples was red. And Rome was that grey/off white found in the exquisite marble sculptures.
As I recall, New Zealand was blue and green, and so vivid in a different way. Now to 'revisit' France, Cairo and all those other places, see what colour they were ...
Meanwhile I'll leave you with one of my favourite angels in Rome, by Bernini.
In Ancient Times ...
'It is also famous as one of the few ancient cities that can now be seen in almost its original splendour, because unlike Pompeii, its burial was deep enough to ensure the upper storeys of buildings remained intact, and the hotter ash preserved wooden household objects such as beds and doors and even food.
Moreover Herculaneum was a wealthier town than Pompeii with an extraordinary density of fine houses, and far more lavish use of coloured marble cladding. The discovery in recent years of some 300 skeletons along the sea shore came as a surprise since it was known that the town itself had been largely evacuated.
Source: Wikipedia.
I found myself fascinated by the ruins of Herculaneum. Destroyed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius back in 79 A.D, there is still so much that is as it was then. I was only there for a few hours but it remains as a memory of immensity ... both in time and space.
One Day Out Wandering ...
I have a photography exhibition happening in Brussels in the autumn, more information to follow but today ... talking with Marcia, I suddenly knew what my theme would be. And I spent the rest of the day going through the hundreds of photo folders I have images stored in ... hundreds and hundreds.
Hundreds to the point where there are photographs I took and never really got back to. In the summer months I have been known to journey from Berlin to Istanbul to Italy. Along the way, processing becomes impossible and special moments build up and overlap, some are lost.
Today has been a day of delightful finds. I had forgotten the time I had spent wandering with Julie. Those photographs, of time spent tearing all over a small corner of England, have been so much fun to go through.
There was this image, taken at Bath ... sunrise or sunset, I don't recall but it was, I remember, absolutely sublime out there in that light.
