I have Canon 5D MkII, with a video function I've never used
The band, Nickel & Dime, with Ivo Sposaro - singer, guitarist and song writer , Antonio Capelli on violin, and Massi Di Fraia, as drummer, came over one evening. To the terrace.
It was really hot but we had a whole lot of fun. A practice run. I plan on improving my skills over the summer so I'm ready for a new series of attempts in the autumn.
Rita, Ivo's lovely wife, filmed me filming them play another song ...
These days, I am more aware of the impermanence of things.
I develop routines, find a place to live, have particular friends but always aware that these things are not forever.
Mr One went traveling for a couple of months and when he returned, he had grown and changed so many of his habits and routines.
I arrived in Italy and moved into the apartment I had been returning to since 2008 but then I had to leave. And I love where I live now, so much more but I had to let go and trust that things would be okay, even though it seemed impossible.
Winter was cold and I was ill but now it's summer, and it's so hot, and I'm loving that. It hasn't dropped below 23 celsius for weeks, not even at night but we have these occasional storms and so, unlike much of Italy, we're not experiencing drought. I love Genova's Fiordland-like deluges. I leave the windows open and listen to the rain crashing down.
I had a few weeks of wandering alone here in the city. Of days without shape or appointments. I was unmoored from life, quite completely. There was nothing and no one to hold me but I knew, that too would pass. And so, I very quietly, enjoyed that time of photography, writing and wandering.
I have found places, here in Genova, where the music is good. And musicians who are some of the kindest, most amusing, people I know. Spending time with them is so much fun. I hope to post video here soon. But that's a long story for later ...
And today, a woman told me she liked my writing, and that meant the world to me. Grazie mille for your kindness.
It's very difficult to take my work seriously. I'm a photographer who writes. It feels more like a kind of rebellion in this world where value is measured via income and social position ... this desire to seek out, and try to capture, beauty.
So it's another strange space I inhabit. I'm not anything respectable, like an accountant or a doctor. I don't work in an office or a shop. I only make art ...
But I love my life. And sometimes, when I go wandering, I turn at the right time and photograph a small boy gently touching a chandelier that is for sale in an antiques market, here in Italy. And that makes everything perfectly okay.
Walking here, it is simple to become distracted by the exquisite details the light reveals.
I could walk here, all day every day, for 100 years, and I'm sure I would find new things ... every single time.
Sometimes it's the light, sometimes it's just me looking extra hard.
I love this city.
I took this photograph and, when I looked at it in Photoshop, there was nothing I needed to do to it.
It made me think about the etymology of the word photography ...
'It was created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), "light" and γραφή (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light".
I am learning to read the light here. To know where to go at what hour. And if I get right, then the ordinary becomes extraordinary ... by virtue of the light.
Amedeo Modigliani.
Every day here, I wander these ancient streets at some point.
And every day, I see something extraordinary.
I love this photograph. I love the art, and then I love way the tyre track has moved the chalk down and out of the confines of the original drawing.
And that's the other thing about life here in Genova. It's never just ordinary. It's never just street art, or light..
You know when you just happen to be in the right place at the right time ...?
That happened today. I have been losing myself, regularly, in Genova's centro storico. The ancient heart of this complicated and beautiful city.
I love to walk down through the cool, narrow alleyways called caruggi ... down to the port and pop out into the light. Just for a little bit, before heading back into the caruggi to climb the hill, heading for one of the oldest parts of the city. It's been more than 2,000 years since people began living there.
These days, I'm searching for seats in the shade ... places to sit and write this book I've been writing forever.
But today, when I arrived back in the light of Piazza Matteotti, I noticed they were hanging the exhibition poster ... for the Vivian Maier Exhibition.
I couldn't resist attempting to capture it. I think, perhaps, she might have enjoyed this photograph.
