Photo Culture #13: Dorothea Lange

The image that most of all raised public awareness at the time of the Great Depression was taken in California, north of Los Angeles and almost never existed. 1936: Photographer Dorothea Lange, after seeing the sign of a pea field, continued on for about 20 miles. However, there was a detail of the field that struck her and so she decided to go back: here she noticed Frances Owens Thompson, so approached her and her children. The harvest had frozen and the farmers in the field were left without food. This photo taken by Dorothea Lange, known as the “Migrant Mother”, went around the United States and helped to send about 9 tons of food to the area where Frances and many other farmers were. Through an intimate portrait of a troubled family, Lange put a face to a suffering nation.

Photo Culture #12: Sebastiao Salgado

In the mid-1980s, the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado made an extraordinary reportage on the Sierra Pelada gold mine in Brazil. Since the first gold was found in the quarry, there has been a continuous coming and going of men who left their lands to work in the mine, hoping to find a gold nugget. And so, every day, an enormous number of people went up and down the precarious ladders in the quarry, dozens of times a day, carrying bags of mud weighing 60 kilos, in which they looked for even the smallest trace of precious metal. One of the most incredible and powerful reportage ever made in the history of photography.

Blue Monday

A few years ago I took the wrong train. It’s not a metaphor, I really took the wrong train, but it wasn’t a big deal, I had to take a regional train and I went to the wrong track, nothing incredible. So I had to get off in another train station to take the right train. It was raining and I had to wait around 30 minutes, so I decided to take some pictures in the meanwhile. At the end of the day I was happy for taking the wrong train, because I had the possibility to take this picture, that I like. It was monday. It was Blue Monday. So, you understand what I mean, I guess.

Photo Culture #11: Robert Capa

One of the most controversial images in the history of photography and one of the most famous and important of the 20th century. In August 1936 Robert Capa left for Spain with the intention of documenting the Spanish Civil War on the front line. Capa is passionate about the anti-fascist cause, takes a stand, becomes a militant, telling like no other the strength and courage of men in struggle and the difficulties of an afflicted and innocent people. The photo, known as “The Falling Soldier”, was taken on the Cordoba front, in Cerro Muriano, during a Loyalist offensive.

Photo Culture #10: Ed Clark

In 1945 Ed Clark, photographer of LIFE magazine, was sent to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s funeral in Warm Springs, Georgia. As hundreds of photographers snapped pictures of the funeral procession, Clark, hearing the notes of Dvorak’s “Goin’ Home” coming from behind him, turned and saw a man crying. The image depicting Navy officer Graham Jackson went around the world, becoming an icon and symbol of a mourning country, broken by pain.

A Step Back: The Most Appreciated Posts of This Blog

Happy New Year to everybody! I’m sure you are all projected to the future and your good resolutions:I want to take one last step back and make a list of all the best articles in my blog that you may have missed. I wrote so many things about photography and if I have to look back I feel comfortable with Living is easy with one eye closed. It dosn’t have great numbers, a lot of visitors or followers, but I love people that read this blog and whoever is here with me so thank you. I don’t need 100 or 1000 visits per day, I write it for me, to pour out my thoughts about photography (and sometimes about life). So I’m happy with it! Here a list with some interesting posts, if you like it feel free to share one of them on your channels and social media, it will help the growth of this blog (but it’s not my goal, as I said before). Have a wonderful 2023!

My Best Street Photos of 2022

This year is almost gone. I don’t want to write a post about my 2022, it would be too self-centred and boring. By the way, it’s been a year full of different things, good and bad, as happens to everybody, I guess. But let’s talk about photography. I tried to select the best street photos I took during this year, since the midnight of the 1 January until now (well, 2022 is not over and maybe I could take some good photos today or tomorrow, but I don’t think so…). Just pure street photos, no Raindrop Blues nor Urban Melodies. I chose the photos according to my personal taste, so I’m not really sure about my selection, I’m not a great editor of myself. But it’s ok, here is the gallery and I hope you will enjoy it!

I wish you the best for 2023 and I hope you can achieve all your good resolutions. See you next year and thanks for being here.

1 January: a few minutes after midnight. In Rome there was a surreal fog that night, so fireworks were soft, weird, they look like a galaxy or a starry night sky. It was beautiful.

Photo Culture #9: Alex Webb

Maybe the greatest contemporary street photographer and one of the greatest ever, Alex Webb is known for his images full of colour, people, complexity and reading planes. He takes this shot in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico: one of the masterpieces of the stunning book “La Calle”, which collects his shots taken in Mexico between 1975 and 2007. Since 1979 Alex Webb is one of the leading photographers of Magnum Photos.

Photo Culture #8: Douglas Martin

Dorothy Counts, the first African American student to enroll at Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (North Carolina), is mocked by other students on her first day of school, in 1957. That day bystanders threw stones, insults and spits to Dorothy, while she proudly ignored the surrounding chaos. However after only four days Dorothy was forced to withdraw from school, after yet another humiliation and after her father’s car was smashed. Only in 2008 Harding High School gave her an honorary diploma. With this photo Douglas Martin won the World Press Photo.

Photography and the Obsession with the Passage of Time

“Time” by Pink Floyd always told us to pay attention to the passage of time (“And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today, and then one day you find ten years have got behind you”). And what have we done? We didn’t bother that much. But one day we woke up and realized that time had passed, we looked in the mirror and noticed some gray hair. There isn’t a day when I don’t think about how quickly things change: a blink of an eye and you’ve finished university, a few beers and you find yourself already catapulted into adulthood. Rivers of nostalgia. A moment ago I was young and life seemed very long, the time to take a breath and I’m already 41 years old.