Genova

One of the things I love about Genova is the fact that mass tourism hasn't decimated her soul.

The Genovese go about their lives in a way that feels like forever and familiar .  And there is the sacred and the profane out there as you wander.  The exquisite and the run-down stand side by side.  Take a few steps and you're some place else.

There is ancient grandeur and there are the wilder streets.  Those streets that inspire caution when you consider exploring them. 

Genova is as She is.  There is no pretence.  Grandeur and grittiness co-exist.  You can love her ... or not.  She will not bow or preen for you.

I love that.

In These Days ...

I have 3 projects to work on and there's only one me ...

Can you hear the sigh in that sentence?  And I love all of the projects equally, so it's not about the one or two that are a nuisance.  It's about wanting to do all of them beautifully.

And then there's the house, and other events, and a pile of books that I'd love to read.  I caught one of those books as it slid off my desk when I sat down here this morning.  The pile is very precariously stacked.  Interwoven with papers and notes, covered in ideas of things I'd like to remember to do.

But anyway ... I made the 2.5 hour train trip to Ieper (Ypres) on Monday and met a family of 6, with 4 of the most beautifully behaved children I've ever met ... without any exaggeration.  I went allowing for the chaos that can be a family portrait session and came away stunned by those kidlets. 

Rolling across Belgium in a train has to one of my favourite things.  I love the fact I'm in the world but out of it.  If I find the right seat, then it's the perfect place to finish a book and/or nap.  I did both, passing out in the 30 celsius+ heat after the photo-shoot. 

You meet interesting people too.  I met a young guy who was studying journalism and we talked for a while.  I had been lost in my book and he heard me asking the conductor where we might be.  I was quietly worried I had missed my train-changing stop.  So I asked him about his studies and it was interesting to hear the state of journalism today, as told to him by his professors. He talked of the book he is planning.  I love that about trains, well ... and planes too, the conversations you get to have with people you've never met before.

In other news, I'm back in France in a few days.  Photographing a wedding that promises to be exquisite.  Then over to Italy for the 5-day workshop where I get to work with some lovely women in a dreamlike setting. 

September finds me back in Genova.  Anna, at Beautiful Liguria, is working with me on a project that is so close to my heart.   Perhaps that one will take me right through the winter.

And I have an editor for my book and an exhibition space for my photography and so ... work must be done.  Perhaps if I stop for a moment and simply organise the books and papers piled up on my desk, then my day can go forward in the best kind of way. 

Perhaps.

Anyway, I called the image below 'painting with light'.  Sometimes, for me, it's all about the attempt to capture light where I find it ...

 

Sardines ...

A high of 34 celsius is expected here in Antwerp today.  It started early and was already 29 when I biked to the supermarket at 9am.  It's lovely, I'm not going to complain ... It's just very. very. hot. for this crowded little city with the massive European highway passing through it.

Thunderstorms should crash over us tonight or tomorrow, and a 10 degree drop in temperature is expected.

It's summer.  It's like that.  Sometimes we have one.

When I have time, the search for exhibition photographs goes on ... and along the way I find shots like this one, taken in Istanbul.  It still makes me smile.  I called it sardines.

Colours ...

There are two devices which can help the sculptor to judge his work: one is not to see it for a while. The other... is to look at his work through spectacles which will change its color and magnify or diminish it, so as to disguise it somehow to his eye, and make it look as though it were the work of another.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1590 -1680

As I work though my photo folders, putting together a collection of work for the exhibition, I began to see I have this thing about colour but it's not limited to one colour ... it seems that each place has had its own colour for me.

Genova is, for me, predominately gold/yellow/orange.  Naples was red.  And Rome was that grey/off white found in the exquisite marble sculptures.

As I recall, New Zealand was blue and green, and so vivid in a different way.  Now to 'revisit' France, Cairo and all those other places, see what colour they were ...

Meanwhile I'll leave you with one of my favourite angels in Rome, by Bernini.

In Ancient Times ...

'It is also famous as one of the few ancient cities that can now be seen in almost its original splendour, because unlike Pompeii, its burial was deep enough to ensure the upper storeys of buildings remained intact, and the hotter ash preserved wooden household objects such as beds and doors and even food.

Moreover Herculaneum was a wealthier town than Pompeii with an extraordinary density of fine houses, and far more lavish use of coloured marble cladding. The discovery in recent years of some 300 skeletons along the sea shore came as a surprise since it was known that the town itself had been largely evacuated.

Source: Wikipedia.


I found myself fascinated by the ruins of Herculaneum.  Destroyed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius back in 79 A.D, there is still so much that is as it was then.  I was only there for a few hours but it remains as a memory of immensity ... both in time and space. 

 

One Day Out Wandering ...

I have a photography exhibition happening in Brussels in the autumn, more information to follow but today ... talking with Marcia, I suddenly knew what my theme would be.  And I spent the rest of the day going through the hundreds of photo folders I have images stored in ... hundreds and hundreds.

Hundreds to the point where there are photographs I took and never really got back to.  In the summer months I have been known to journey from Berlin to Istanbul to Italy.  Along the way, processing becomes impossible and special moments build up and overlap, some are lost.

Today has been a day of delightful finds.  I had forgotten the time I had spent wandering with Julie.  Those photographs, of time spent tearing all over a small corner of England, have been so much fun to go through.

There was this image, taken at Bath ... sunrise or sunset, I don't recall but it was, I remember, absolutely sublime out there in that light.

A Remarkable Woman

Whether we know it, or not, we are all remarkable souls.  Individuals with stories, tapestries of individual beauty. 

Over the years I've realised that each individual carries so many stories inside.

I started moving house when I was 21 and newly married.  Over the years of the first marriage we moved at least 12 times.  And I remember watching and wondering, as we drove by old homes on the road between wherever we were living and 'home', about the people who might have been forever inhabitants in those houses ... wondering what their stories felt like.

I see people as beautiful stories, like books with their own individual covers, and I enjoy the privilege of 'reading' a little when we work on a portrait shoot or simply spend time together.  Some try to tell me that their lives are so ordinary but lives are never ordinary.  It's as fascinating to listen to someone who has lived their entire life in one place as it is to listen to a person who has traveled.

Like wine, we all have our own flavour, our own ageing-process ... depth, maturity, character are all words that can be applied as much to humans as to wine.

Back in Genova, I spent two days with Diny and it was an incredible pleasure.  The tapestry of her life was beautifully woven.  I can imagine her laughing as she reads this but it's less about perfection and more about the deep beauty of being real and present. Of being honest.  Of embracing life in a way that left me admiring her intensely.

And she gave me permission to post one of the photographs I took of her while we worked. 

 

 

Story-Tellers

Maybe I'm 'involved' in too many things ... is the thought that occurs to me as I try to organise my desk as a viable working space after Italy, on this much-cooler Sunday morning in Belgium.

I'm trying to organise all ...  there are the things I want to blog about from Genova, the photography workshop material I'm printing and organising, the Inspiration workbook material I'm preparing for the 5-day workshop in Italy, and the book on Genova I'm putting together ... and then there's everything else that interests me too. Reminders, notes, the appointments book, and and and.

To my left my bookshelves are overflowing with books read and unread but I love that state of being.  No pressure, just pure anticipation.  There was the secondhand beauty I found just before flying - Pablo Neruda, Memoirs.  And I'm still meandering through Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days.

Both books were too heavy to take with my camera gear and laptop as hand luggage, as I acknowledged that sad lack of escalators in Italian railway stations.  A lack that has twice made me consider abandoning my luggage there at the bottom of the stairs as I looked up.

Yesterday, pre-massive night-time thunderstorm, I lay on the bed for a while and zipped through the delightful story of a wandering cat and its owners efforts to track it - titled Lost Cat.  Pure lazy luxury.

And I'm still dipping in and out of Paul Kelly's 100 chapter biography (although not the version I've linked to. No cds included in my copy and, sadly, too heavy to contemplate carrying to Genova), and the Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West  because they're the kind of books that invite dipping.  I discovered 'Portuguese Irregular Verbs' at my .75 cent secondhand book supplier (so many good books found at this price) and it's waiting there in the queue.  And finally I am reading 'TinkerBell, in the Realm of the Never Fairies with Miss 9.  It's an excuse for us to hang-out up here, in the cool of the evening, reading and chatting.  We're looking for the next big series read but will put that decision off a little longer.

I'll leave you with a story-scene from medieval Genova.

3 Things To Share ...

It's a hot muggy night here in Belgium.  I believe all risk of snow is finally gone but I seem to have some lingering issues with the winter that was ...

Oh, you noticed.

Tonight was the night where I wrote a long reply to Laura and afterwards, inspired by my written 'conversation' with her, I wandered into this beautiful performance by my favourite Belgian jazz musician, Toots Thielemans, and Stevie Wonder.

They were playing as I read through Justine Musk's latest post, on finding your passion.

She wrote:  We forget – if we were ever even fully aware — that passion is rooted in suffering. As Todd Henry points out in his excellent book DIE EMPTY: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day, the word ‘passion’ is rooted in the Latin word pati which means “to suffer or endure”. Our culture’s distorted understanding of the concept has created what Henry calls “the passion fallacy” as well as “a false notion of what it means to engage in gratifying work.”

So perhaps — when we try to find the great work of our soul and build out an epic life for ourselves ...

She suggests that we should ask... “What work am I willing to suffer for today?”

I'm aware, that when I wander in Genova, it reads as if it is all beauty and joy but it's one of the more difficult things I do to myself.  I fly high on the beauty I find there, on the people I meet ... on the experiences I have but I empty myself in the high and then ... sometimes, I crash.

Reading Justine's words I  thought, Well yes, Genova is a passion.  My passion for that city isn't without suffering.  Sometimes I feel like I fly so close to the sun, as I explore the city's history, colours, culture ... sometimes I go back to the apartment and attempt to recover from something that feels not unlike Stendhal Syndrome.

Realisation over, I read on, catching up on my incoming and voila, there was this ... and it made me think that I must blog tonight's finds.  Titled 40 Inspiring Workplaces from the Famously Creative ... see what you think.

I thought it exquisite.

Below, I'm posted a fragment from an ancient painting I loved back in Genova ...

Genova And I ...

Tonight is the night I spend cleaning the apartment and packing to leave Genova.

My airline changed its usual flight times between Italy and Belgium.  I need to leave here earlier than usual but, realistically, I can't do the big clean-up-before-leaving in the humidity that is ...  It's a long journey home.  One that involves a bus, a train, another train, a plane, a bus, and a tram.  It's only 1 hour 15 minutes between airports and countries but there's the reaching the airport thing ... and the getting home too.

It becomes epic but I have my snazzy new luggage... she trails off.  That would be the bag that blew my budget upon arriving in Italy ... the replacement for the red one that had had the powerfully stinking fish juice spill on it.  Ho hum.  Nice bag.   I guess it can be an early birthday gift to myself, a thought that may help absorb the pain of paying full price and then some for luggage in an airport.

Hmmm, note to self, the pain of that experience still isn't out of my system.

But mostly this visit has been about good people.  There was Roberto, a lovely guy I met last time I was here.  He very kindly introduced me to some places in the city I hadn't explored.  And he survived my New Zealand-English.  Grazie mille, Roberto.

And there was Anna, from Beautiful Liguria. It is always, without fail, inspiring and exciting to spend time talking with her. 

And Outi, another lovely friend I made last time I was in Genova.  An inspiring woman too!

Actually, I was here to meet Diny.  A truly remarkable woman who was a pleasure to spend time with.  We worked together on both Saturday and Sunday, then had dinner on Monday and ended that evening out in Piazza De Ferrari, eating gelato and enjoying the cool breeze of the evening.  It was a real delight to spend time with her.

I was out with Barbara tonight, aperitivo after lunching with her earlier.  One day I will stun her with my fluent Italian.  Well actually, I'll probably stun myself first ... there is so much grammar to learn. 

And Lorenzo.  Some days, we met for a coffee after he closed his cafe for the day.  He came to Belgium last year, searching for the grey skies that Belgium does so well.  He introduced us to the vegetarian 'meat' products while he was over.  We love him for that.

And Stefano.  I had lunch with him back in those days when I first arrived.  It's always a pleasure to catch up with this lovely man, responsible for the Righicam website.  The site with those cameras that look out over Genova.

The humidity here has been high.  Higher than I'm used to.  Sometimes two showers per day and a complete change of clothes was the only solution.  That said, I've loved being warm ... loved watching my skin change to brown even though I haven't spent any time sunbathing.

So yes, I'm leaving on a jet plane ... but I DO know when I'll be back again.

I'm back in September, with 50 photographs selected for my book and as much text as possible.  There is a plan. 

The image that follows ... I'll write more on it once home and unpacked.  I need my notes but it's divine don't you think?

Light and Colour, Genova

I can never predict what I might find out in the streets of Genova, Italy.

Never.  It seems that all is possible.  Today the light was strong and it was hot.  Really unbelievably hot but I am adjusting to it.  Loving it even ... after the long Belgian winter that was.

I couldn't resist attempting to capture something of the artworks found in the narrow caruggi (alleyways) here in the ancient heart of Genova.

Today was a second day spent introducing a lovely woman to this Italian city I like so well.

We wandered the city with our cameras, chasing the light, searching out things we found beautiful and/or interesting, talking, walking ... an ideal way to spend time here in Genova.

At some point I looked up and spotted this dress overhead and loved how it looked out there on the line.

 

A Superb Day ...

Genoa has been nicknamed la Superba ("the Superb one") due to its glorious past and impressive landmarks. Part of the old town of Genoa was inscribed on the World Heritage List (UNESCO) in 2006 (see below). The city's rich art, music, gastronomy, architecture and history allowed it to become the 2004 European Capital of Culture. It is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus.

Sourced, Wikipedia.

But really, one can expect no less in La Superba.  It is a magnificent city that merges the everyday with a remarkable history. 

I looked up, as I was hunting down breakfast this morning ...

The Creatures on Cattedrale Di San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo's Cathedral was built to hold Saint John the Baptist's ashes ... ashes that arrived in Genova after the crusade in 1098. 

The lions that guard the entrance have been a point of fascination for me.  Today, searching for the cloister of yesterday (wrong church), I discovered the animals around the corner behind my favourite lion.

I love the way they seem to be attempting to peer round the corner ...