Album Fotografico

Hollywood Set

Via Margutta 51. I was the first to spot the street sign. In my mind, I saw it half a century ago. Sun shining, children playing, loping stairways. Maybe you just can’t see this from the street. I half expected a young Gregory Peck to come out, maybe leading Audrey Hepburn on her first Roman adventure. Instead it is us on our Roman adventure. Standing outside the house numbered 51 on a quiet, empty street. I stretch my arms out, pull my left foot back, touching my toe to the ground. I embrace my inner Audrey.

Twenty-two seconds
I am someone else waiting
For happy endings

How to Become an Acrobat

Piazza del Popolo. First stop on Notte Bianca. It’s not as crowded as I imagined. Just wait for later. We wade our way in as the music starts. Two figures in white swing, back and forth. It’s like I’m back on the playground in elementary school willing myself to go higher and higher to touch the trees with my feet. There is a tightrope walker, and a Spanish duo with their theatrics: arms spread wide, palms to cheek in surprise. The Chinese boys, so young, vault on top of each other in their matching red outfits. It gets darker. We huddle closer, watching the white figures at the top of the piazza cartwheel and handspring across the way, looking more like cartoons than real people. The jump and bounce. Those figures stay with me all night.

町の角
人込み夜の
懐かしさ

(the city corner
on the crowded night
nostalgic)

Tour of the French Embassy

Tours are conducted in Italian or French. Do you understand, she asks us in Italian. Un po’ di. Kind of like my un peu francais. Would I understand more if she spoke Italian or French? I’m not sure. I concentrate hard as we move into the Palazzo. At some point, I can tell that she is French and not Italian, though she seems competent in the language. I look when she points up or across. I pick out single words that make me feel accomplished, as Lisa whispers answers that I only half-listen to. The language grabs me. I like this better than the Palazzo Vecchio tour in English. This is what I am supposed to be listening to, even if I don’t understand. I pick up on excitement, on piu importante. I don’t need anyone to tell me how to by hypnotized by the ceiling fresco.

The Italian
Asks Come ti chiami?
Her name is Marie

Il Foro Romano

This is the first time I have seen the Forum dark. Walking down the steps on the side, I squint to see what I can, to see how far I can. The first day we came here, the sun was shining almost too brightly. Now, most of it lies in darkness, and I can hear music coming from the Capitoline. I pause. I'm not sure who decided we had to make it to the Forum, but I'm glad we came. It seems peaceful among the noise, crowd, and chaos of the night, this one night of all nights. I let my eyes scan the Forum again. In the distance all I see are large masses, huddled together. It is safe.

Castel Sant'Angelo

From far away, it looks almost like a rough cupcake. I'm not sure where that imagery came from. We walked up across the Ponte Sant'Angelo and it was like walking across a moat. Now, from the top, I pretend to see everything. Well, most of Rome, at least. I can see St. Peter's Basilica, someone just pointed out to me the Pantheon. From here, I think it's even more surreal that I'm in Rome. People dash around to take pictures, forming groups that get larger and larger with the "you get in too's." Making memories. Photos do help. Maybe when I look at these photos a smile will come to my face and I'll think of the wind lifting hair and funny faces and giggles.

Judith Beheading Holofernes

I stumbled upon a Caravaggio. I never really thought I would. Wouldn’t I know ahead of time if there was going to be a Caravaggio where I was going? These are masterpieces; they wouldn’t be hiding just anywhere so that I might happen upon one. But stumble upon one I did.

I walked into the room, one of the apartments of Taddeo Barberini and Anna Colonna, and that was the first painting that caught my attention. Judith and Holofernes. For half a second (a half second that I am ashamed of), I thought, this can’t be right, I saw this in the Uffizi. That was the Artemisia Gentileschi painting of the same subject. I only had a brief glimpse of that one, enough to recognize it before I dashed off in search of leather. It’s a tough choice in Florence. The choice between leather and art.

Here, the blood spurts from Holofernes’ neck, but Judith doesn’t seem particularly frightened or enraged, as I was so certain she would be. She seems intent, as though concentrating very hard, but managing to look beautiful without spilling a drop of blood on her pristine dress. The nurse (I assume she’s a nurse; at any rate, the older woman in the picture) looks more emotionally involved, as she holds Judith’s skirt back for her, hands clenched over the folds of fabric.

Holofernes’ expression is one that I find hard to place. But when you think about it, how do you expect someone to look when their head is being cut off? I like to think that he knows what is about to happen, just before Judith acts. I dreg the depths of my memory in an attempt to recall the whole story. Why is Judith killing him? I come up empty, remembering only that Holofernes was evil, which in itself says very little.

The lighting makes the entire painting into a scene from a drama. As if these are characters playing out their parts on a stage, but that blood is real. This is no school children’s play. As I read more about the story, this rings true again and again.

Judith, cunning woman that she is, plots to kill the evil Holofernes by getting him drunk, and then beheading him. This is the classic tale of virtue overcoming evil, and we see this in the contrast between Holofernes’ violent body spasm and the inaudible scream that we know issued from his lips before he died, and Judith, distant and elegant. She is committing murder but it is justified because Holofernes is evil and she is saving us from him.

I keep thinking about the painting long after I leave Palazzo Barberini. More than the gruesomeness of Holofernes’ semi-attached head, I am impressed by Judith’s stalwart, yet elegant look. Her calm countenance in the midst of chaos is comforting. She remains resilient.

Il Pantheon

As I walked in, all I saw were cameras pointed up, and a mass of people. Going in further, I heard voices singing, saw people sitting in rows of chairs along the center of the Pantheon. Noise of tour groups, frustrated kids, and camera clicks dominate. Feet shuffle past me. Another wave has come in. But the singers, dressed in strangely normal, uncoordinated clothes, rise above this. This is the perfect place for sound to resonate. Flash again. I try to tune out the extraneous, can I hear the altos? Is this a service? Do normal people get to come and sit in the seats? Who are the singers?

Look

The Campo is the tourist center of the small city of Siena. The tower, billed as the tallest secular tower in Tuscany, stands here. Moving around the edge of the Campo one can see restaurants, tabacchi, souvenir shops, gelateria, and cafés, the necessities for most visitors to the area. It is the last one that we are concerned with here. Standing at the base of the tower, and looking toward 3 o’clock, we will find Key Largo, a small café, Rick Steves tells us. He recommends this particular café because one can sit without paying an additional charge. On this Sunday morning, we see five students, college-age, sitting in a row along the balcony of the café. The three boys and two girls all sit with notebooks and alternately write intently and stare out into the Campo, now filling with an assortment of tour groups, sun bathers, and families with young children.

If we move closer to the balcony of Key Largo, we can begin to hear snippets of the students’ conversation.

“Look,” points out one of the boys, “The shadow of the tower has moved since we got here.” In the 15 minutes the group has been sitting up there, the shadow has moved so that now it only covers about half of the group that had been sitting in its shade. A tour group with a flag has also tried to take advantage of this thin road of shade through the Campo. Others don’t mind the sun; a few have even brought towels to lie down on.

Two girls are walking toward the Campo now, each with a towel tucked under one arm and a bag slung over the opposite shoulder. They settle on a sunny spot on the north side of the Campo, not too far from the coffee drinkers at Key Largo. The girls spread out their towels, one green and one blue, bright flashes that break up the stony quilt of the cobblestones.

They are in close proximity to the constant stream of tour groups that make their way here for a two minute history of locale before continuing on to the Duomo, further up the hill.

They troop in with matching lanyards, following a flag, or sometimes, a closed umbrella. The next group that we see is a group of Japanese tourists. We know this not because of the mass of black-haired heads, but because all the women are dressed impeccably, wearing gloves and hats, and are constantly flapping fans. As their guide stops in the shade of the tower, the rest fall into line, creating a perfect rectangle within the larger shadow.

Turning back to Key Largo, two of the boys on the balcony are immersed in a conversation about Campo wildlife: pigeons. A group of them have gathered in front of the café, the attraction being a piece of bread that one of the sun bathing girls dropped; she felt sorry for them.

By the time we look back to the center of the square, the tour group has gone. There is nothing to indicate they were even there. The two girls, before positioned so perfectly to absorb the rays of the sun, now feel the shadow of the tower as it brushes over their feet. Is it time for lunch already? The girls roll up their towels, tuck them under their arms, and head away from the Campo and its shadow.

When we look back to Key Largo, we see the students have also noticed the time. They make note of the change in the shadow in their journals, and one by one, stand up and turn, bend their heads low to avoid hitting them in the doorway, and plod down the stairs.

“Ciao,” says the barista, who knows them after their second visit.

Ciao.

Siena - Santa Maria della Scala

The floor is only uncovered once a year, for a few months, to preserve it. I hear tapping noises - the sound of restorers, I assume, working on the middle section, which is the only part blocked from the touch of feet. Sounds resonate. Tour guides speaking into mics. Families, little children's voices in a multitude of languages. They're getting louder. I dislike the sound of feet stepping on wood. The marbles seems to soak up sound rather than throw it to the top of the dome. That is what I prefer.