Summer is coming. Not the best time to take photos, at least in Italy, given that peaks of 37-38°C (around 100°F) are expected until next Sunday. Luckily I’ll be leaving for Berlin on Friday for a few days: I won’t have a lot of time to take photographs, but I’ll try to make it enough. In the last period I have launched my new series People Melodies, as you will have read in the previous post, and I am trying to transform the idea into new commissioned works. Let’s see if it will work. A new photographic walk of my workshop on Street Photography was not as fantastic as the second one (which I told you about here), but this time too it was possible to draw an excellent lesson: after almost two hours walking between St. Peter’s Square and Castel Sant’Angelo, oppressed by the heat and the lack of interesting enough scenes to photograph, while we were about to give up for not having brought home even one good photo, my “student” and I came across this fantastic white hat, which It really made our day. So, in this case, patience is the key word.
Have I already told you about the Film People project? Of course yes. My series of street portraits, in which I ask people to write the title of their favorite film on my board, has reached a good number: I have reached 210 photos. On the project website you can also read the reasons why these films were chosen, a way to discover something about the people I portray, using Cinema as a key to enter the personalities I meet, in a dream, an ambition, a memory , something that remains within us, which is expressed with the choice of a film. Something subconscious perhaps, but certainly fascinating. The power of cinema! Here are the new portraits taken in recent weeks:
Among other things, I visited the YellowKorner gallery a couple of times, where a new piece from my collection, Lungotevere, had arrived. I also took the opportunity to see my Castel Sant’Angelo work in giant format, it was truly splendid to discover new details, it was like observing it for the first time!
I have told you some little news about my life as a photographer, although it would be nice to talk more about photography, styles, splendid things seen around and much more. Maybe next time, after Berlin or directly from my summer residence in Monopoli, Southern Italy. If we have therefore talked about Photography, all that remains is to mention the usual Other Stuff, i.e. cinema and music. Among the films I saw for the first time in the last few days (hey, follow me on Letterboxd!), I absolutely loved Starlet by Sean Baker, a director I have followed for many years. This is Sean Baker’s fourth film, the first with professional actors, and it is yet another wonderful portrait of suburban lives, among suburbs not only geographically, but of the soul, with an enchanting couple of outsiders. The splendid Dree Hemingway (daughter of the young Tracy from Manhattan and great-granddaughter of Ernest) is a porn star just starting out who, to furnish the room in which she lives a little better, goes to buy some second-hand objects. From an elderly widow she buys a thermos, which she wants to use as a vase, but inside she finds about 10 thousand dollars. After a vain attempt to return the money, the girl forms a sincere friendship with the old woman, a strange couple that however explodes with humanity, who accompanies us hand in hand until the final emotions. Anyway, an excellent starter, while waiting to see Anora, Baker’s latest film (which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes). In the meantime, I highly recommend you also watch Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, which are all great.
Last week Françoise Hardy left us. It is therefore impossible not to close the journal with a tribute to this fantastic singer, who gave us a legacy of unforgettable songs, often used in many beautiful films (Moonrise Kingdom, The Dreamers, Les Invasions Barbares and many others). I greet you with the link to her first album (1962), 12 songs to be transported to the France of the Nouvelle Vague, among loves, dances and lots of life!
Living is easy with one eye closed 