On Being Filmed

I'm sitting here at my computer, being filmed as I type ... telling the story of my life here in Antwerp.  How I arrived, what I like about it, and what is difficult.

It's quite odd.  I have relaxed far too much but my interviewer is lovely.  She's Belgian and (it's almost an of course) her English is far more English than mine.  I'm almost resigned to this happening though.  The Belgians seem only to need a small exposure to BBC English and they own it.  Meanwhile, New Zealanders spend their entire lives struggling out here in the world with their strangely pronounced vowel sounds.

It's Autumn ... grey and windy.  There's a walk in the park coming up and some more conversations.  Meanwhile, I've been processing some of the photographs of that previous trip to Italy

On Preferring Genova ...

A shameful admission ... perhaps, but I didn't fall in love with Verona. I don't know what I expected.  I may have accidentally watched Letters To Juliet once and you might say, that serves you right, Di. 

It was a very pretty movie set in an Italian summer.  Meanwhile I was there in September on an overcast day and I couldn't help noticing how much they had tidied things up for the movie.  And I think I was disappointed.

I really like Genova.  I like the extremes of Genova.  And it doesn't pretend to be anything it's not.  The gritty is there, right next to the pretty, in that northern Italian city located on the edge of the Ligurian Sea.

Trieste didn't seem to be pretending, not at all, during the few hours spent there.  And the local restaurant we found served food that I'm still dreaming about.  I love Rome but not like Genova.  Rome is simply something else.  Magnificent.

Acqui Terme has fabulous food and wine.  And the people were lovely but still, I preferred Genova.

Venice ... rainy, overcast, crowded.  I don't know, it didn't capture me but perhaps I need to go back there in summer, or spring.  On a sunny day anyway.  And Cinque Terre ... I'm still muttering about the crowds I found there.

Naples, that was something something else!  It was like nowhere I've ever been before.  Not like Istanbul, nor Cairo.  Not Singapore.  Naples was just its ownself.  I loved it but I imagine it's obvious by now ... not like I love Genova.

I write all of this in a bemused state of mind.  I need to pop in and visit Florence one day, and maybe drive through this Tuscan countryside everyone raves about.  Even if it only confirms what I suspect ... that Genova has everything, and more, of what I prefer.

Maybe Italy is like a pick-a-path story.  Maybe you simply find what you love best there and stay loyal to it.  I don't know but that's how it is for me.

The Colours of Genova, Italy

Then there were the colours of Genova. Perhaps each person experiences them differently but my over-riding impression was of a city painted in colours that ranged from pale yellow through into a deep orange. Deep green shutters, sometimes blue.

 

I was invited to write for a website in Genova and above is a small extract.  But I had smile, my passion for that city is huge and my first draft of the article was more like a 'let me count the ways' list.

 

I used some of my photographs in storyboard form, attempting to write of concrete things.  This was one series.  It gives you a sense of the colour there in that beautiful Italian city.

 

And now ...

Chance encounters change lives.  Close friends, passing acquaintances and even characters who emerge from old books often leave footprints across my heart.  By opening mysterious doors, the influence of others has inadvertently altered the direction of my life.

Colin Monteath, extracted from Under A Sheltering Sky.

And now ... I am beginning work on a long-talked about book.  Years of ideas have reached a point where I must begin working with them.

When I walk on beaches, I pick up shells ... I'm a sometimes collector.  Stones too, when I wander along the edges of rivers and lakes.  Since I was small.

My photography, I think, emerges out of that same desire to collect, to handle, to pore over later.  But to collect, without ever stopping to enjoy, that seems somehow sad.

So here I am, commiting to this book, for months ... at least a year I think.  That is something I haven't excelled in.  I have so many ideas, so many passions, project ideas.  And I try to follow them all. 

These last two months have been months of insanely beautiful chaos and whimsical impulses ... of action.  People. Places.

But I must have been maturing somehow ... like a wine (I hope, avoiding the old and smelly maturation process we call rotting).  I feel ready to attempt to breathe life into a multi-layered story, using the words and images I have been collecting, to create a portrait of a place I love.

In my people portraits the intention is always about capturing a soul ... something of the true essence of a person.  Now to lift that impulse, that desire, and fit it over a city, over a region, and tell how place can capture a heart.

There will be a photography exhibition in December, here at home I am hoping.  A party.  And there are plans for limited edition print runs, postcards ... but woven so very closely into this book project that I think it will all work.  There will be a series of photography workshop beginning in Spring 2014, and I will leave my door open for one-on-one workshops too but mostly, I'll be here at the desk and working on images and ideas collected since 2008.

And so, here I am, announcing it ... the intention.  Now to work.

Venetian Dogs ...

In Venice, there were gondolas, canals, a million tourists, some rain, one very kind woman who stopped to ask if we were lost (then gave us directions because we were).

There was affordable pizza, a gift (or two) for Miss 9, from Julie and another from me.

And there were dogs, more than adept at beating the pigeons to tourist food ...