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.

The Colours of 'My' Genova

A Remarkable Woman

Whether we know it, or not, we are all remarkable souls.  Individuals with stories, tapestries of individual beauty. 

Over the years I've realised that each individual carries so many stories inside.

I started moving house when I was 21 and newly married.  Over the years of the first marriage we moved at least 12 times.  And I remember watching and wondering, as we drove by old homes on the road between wherever we were living and 'home', about the people who might have been forever inhabitants in those houses ... wondering what their stories felt like.

I see people as beautiful stories, like books with their own individual covers, and I enjoy the privilege of 'reading' a little when we work on a portrait shoot or simply spend time together.  Some try to tell me that their lives are so ordinary but lives are never ordinary.  It's as fascinating to listen to someone who has lived their entire life in one place as it is to listen to a person who has traveled.

Like wine, we all have our own flavour, our own ageing-process ... depth, maturity, character are all words that can be applied as much to humans as to wine.

Back in Genova, I spent two days with Diny and it was an incredible pleasure.  The tapestry of her life was beautifully woven.  I can imagine her laughing as she reads this but it's less about perfection and more about the deep beauty of being real and present. Of being honest.  Of embracing life in a way that left me admiring her intensely.

And she gave me permission to post one of the photographs I took of her while we worked. 

Story-Tellers

Maybe I'm 'involved' in too many things ... is the thought that occurs to me as I try to organise my desk as a viable working space after Italy, on this much-cooler Sunday morning in Belgium.

I'm trying to organise all ...  there are the things I want to blog about from Genova, the photography workshop material I'm printing and organising, the Inspiration workbook material I'm preparing for the 5-day workshop in Italy, and the book on Genova I'm putting together ... and then there's everything else that interests me too. Reminders, notes, the appointments book, and and and.

To my left my bookshelves are overflowing with books read and unread but I love that state of being.  No pressure, just pure anticipation.  There was the secondhand beauty I found just before flying - Pablo Neruda, Memoirs.  And I'm still meandering through Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days.

Both books were too heavy to take with my camera gear and laptop as hand luggage, as I acknowledged that sad lack of escalators in Italian railway stations.  A lack that has twice made me consider abandoning my luggage there at the bottom of the stairs as I looked up.

Yesterday, pre-massive night-time thunderstorm, I lay on the bed for a while and zipped through the delightful story of a wandering cat and its owners efforts to track it - titled Lost Cat.  Pure lazy luxury.

And I'm still dipping in and out of Paul Kelly's 100 chapter biography (although not the version I've linked to. No cds included in my copy and, sadly, too heavy to contemplate carrying to Genova), and the Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West  because they're the kind of books that invite dipping.  I discovered 'Portuguese Irregular Verbs' at my .75 cent secondhand book supplier (so many good books found at this price) and it's waiting there in the queue.  And finally I am reading 'TinkerBell, in the Realm of the Never Fairies with Miss 9.  It's an excuse for us to hang-out up here, in the cool of the evening, reading and chatting.  We're looking for the next big series read but will put that decision off a little longer.

I'll leave you with a story-scene from medieval Genova.