And I Arrived ...

It was an epic journey to Genova this time ... 2 hours of sleep, up at 4.45am for the 5.27am tram.  There was the airport-bus, the plane, another bus and a train.  Then arriving, and shopping for essentials and aperitivo with one of my lovely friends here.

I slept so deeply last night.

Today was about drinking that first extraordinarily good cup of espresso, and wandering the streets that I love so well.  It was about catching up with Francesca .  Lunch, and perhaps a siesta and tonight, a ballet at the theatre I've wanted to visit for so long.

Tomorrow is a dinner with new friends. 

Meanwhile the sun has been shining and all around me and, without people realising, I am quietly enjoying the Genovese way of talking and greeting one another out there on the streets.

I have arrived.  Photographs to follow.

In These Days ...

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves

Erica Jong, extract from Women Enough.

I've been busy ... a project, of course.  A new website specifically for the project, and all kinds of other things too.

At night, I shift my aching body from my ergonomically-disasterous desk and creak to my bed ... tired from sitting rather than anything deliciously active.

But the website is almost done.  I'll launch soon, via a newsletter that shall become regular.  I'm eyeing Instagram too ... I'm in Genova next week, it seems like a good time to work out all this social media stuff that I've mostly ignored, as the new project is all about Genova.

I've been cooking and cleaning, imagining myself quite marvelously productive there too, although wanting more applause than I get for fitting everything into my day.  I've always been dubious about this housewife stuff.  It seems to run along the lines of 'if a tree falls in a forest and noone is there to see it ...'  Same with housework.  A clean house is the result of many lost minutes and hours.  Many.

Erica Jong wrote the perfect poem when she wrote Women Enough

So precisely, yes.

But I must work.  I have one more in the elderberry series to post.  It's been up to 28 celsius, thunderstormy, calm and cool too.  It's Spring.  I'm loving it.

Jared Moossy, Photographer

Jared Moossy is an American photographer who filmed all four episodes of the documentary series Witness. He specializes in conflict photography and is a founding member of the photo-collective Razon. For the Witness series, he travelled to Juarez, Libya, Sudan, and Brazil. Witness shows what life is like for photojournalists working in conflict zones; how they utilize fixers and contacts, search out a story, and make their photographs. The series also touches on the dangers that the photographers, their colleagues, and subjects face, while pursing this work.

An Interview with Jared Moossy, in Nowhere Magazine.

Anyone who knows me knows that war photographers and journalists fascinate me.  I read a lot of their literature simply because I have this idea that they take the reader beyond the gloss and spin that is everyday news, beyond everyday life, to a place where agendas don't really play out in reporting the news and the truth can't be bought and repackaged. 

They go out into the world and attempt to tell the story ... a story with words and/or photographs.  Camille Lepage was one of those people.  She was a 26-year-old French photojournalist who died on Tuesday May 14th, 2014 in Central African Republic.

She said, “You, as a photojournalist, are the messenger, you’re not the one who will implement new laws on Human Rights in Russia or Chechen, you’re not the one who will put rapists in jail, you will not cure Aids and won’t give food to all of those who are malnourished, but you’re the one, and that’s essential, who is going to denounce those things. Your job, or at least that’s how I see my role, is to make it as appealing as possible so people can relate to it and ideally put pressure on those in charge and whose role is to make things change!” 

Camille Lepage, December 1, 2011, via the blog of Christine Dowsett.

Jared Moossy for Nowhere Magazine: Syria from Nowhere Magazine on Vimeo.

Nina Coolsaet, Wine-maker

I have a new interview up in my Interviews section.

Nina Coolsaet is the loveliest Spanish-based Belgian who, together with her Spanish husband, Alfredo, is breathing new life into the old family bodega and creating some head-turning wines.

I had the pleasure of interviewing her a while ago.  I was curious to know more about this couple who were all about creating wine with their family in mind.  I imagined how that might affect the way you would produce a wine. 

And so we chatted awhile ...

The photographs were provided by Rafael Bellver and I have created a slideshow of his images over here.