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.

The Hand of God

11 years ago, on my first day in Buenos Aires, I entered a church and there I found a boy who was praying in an Argentina jersey, with that number on his back… It was the day I fell in love with that people. Congratulations for the World Cup, Argentina.

15 December 2022

I went to a press screening and as soon as I entered in the theater I knew that I had to take this photo. I like the feeling of mistery that permeate the image. I can’t understand if the second blond head on the left bothers me or not. But maybe it could be seen as a doppelganger of the head in the middle of the image.

Photo Culture #6: Robert Frank

In 1955 a young Swiss photographer, Robert Frank, obtains a scholarship from the Guggenheim Foundation to carry out a photographic work about United States. Frank will travel the length and breadth of the country, touching 48 different states between 1955 and 1956. The streets, the faces of the people he meets, the city squares, the bars and shops, the sidewalks, the most insignificant details pass and stop in front of the photographer’s lens. The result will be “The Americans”, a book that consecrates its author as a master in the history of photography. The volume represents a true “poem in images” dedicated to the American road (it’s no coincidence that the preface of the book was entrusted to Jack Kerouac); a reportage that, like few others, has truly marked an era, becoming for generations of photographers the main reference for taking pictures and travel, to know and learn with a glance. This image, among many featured in the book, was taken in Idaho.

Photo Culture #5: Gordon Parks

Maybe the most emblematic image took by African-American photographer Gordon Parks. It was taken in Alabama, in 1956, in front of a shopping mall. First African-American contributor to Life magazine, Parks told the world how was being black in a racist society. His photos are famous for their powerful cinematic style and for his ability to tell the story of a community through the eyes of someone who knows its difficulties.

8 December 2022

Yesterday I was walking on Ponte Sisto, the bridge that connect the Historic Center of Rome with Trastevere. When I saw that hand I immediately took a photo of it, I didn’t want their heads in the picture, just that hand, so clear in the middle of the darkness. It’s slightly out of focus, but I had to carpe diem!

4 December 2022

Today I walked around Colosseo and I met a guy, he was about to do a wedding proposal (I guess). I asked him for a portrait and he said yes (I hope his girlfriend said yes too!). Then I took a photo of a beautiful sunset (nothing original, I know). Then I tried to change completely my style. I felt a bit melancholic today so I tried to send the blues away through photography. I took some image in black and white and then I used a blue tone to underline my feelings. And after this shoots I felt better: creativity can be a great therapy.