Saturday, March 05, 2022

 

C - March 4 2022

Having two daughters, when one is about to be 80, has its very good moments. They call me almost every day and Hilary, my youngest daughter, visits me once, and sometimes twice a week. My eldest daughter Alexandra, who lives in Lillooet, I see less often.

Both tell me which bills to pay and are getting my files ready for the income tax and other stuff that one cannot avoid besides one’s death. They even try to solve my laptop problems that are over my head.

Hilary brings me all sorts of pills of zinc, magnesium, fish oil and vitamin-C.

But I can imagine their phone conversations, “What did he look like? Did he shave? Was the house clean? Where there any dishes in the sink? What did his heart (ophthalmologist, urologist, rheumatologist, walk-in clinic doctor) have to say when he saw them?”

You get the idea. They are making sure the “old man” does not give up and they hope that he fades more slowly than General Douglas McArthur.

But I have to confess, that while my pad is clean and tidy, I put extra effort with Rosemary’s Dyson and I do shave in the morning when I know Hilary is coming for dinner.

I have a third person who has entered my life whom I will call C. She nags me to take her photographs and tells me I have to keep doing what I do best, and this according to her is photography.

At my age I refuse to rest on my past laurels and I try to innovate with all that the digital universe has to offer, photographically.

I photographed C a few weeks ago. Yesterday she came over and posed in my little studio. I projected on her, with my new Epson digital projector, the photographs I had taken those weeks before. I am including one of the images (cropped for 2022 correct consumption) one of the photographs. I am quite excited and I wonder if anybody else does this sort of thing? Most of my peers seem to be happy “capturing” sunsets with their phones.

Ugh!

Friday, March 04, 2022

Rosemary, today March 4 2019 in Siena at the 14th century Palazzo Borghesi.

 Perhaps this third batch of A5Galaxy phone photographs I took in Italy accompanied by my Rosemary will be the last of them. I know that when Facebook shows me images taken years ago on today's date (an important one  in 2019) I cannot ignore this fine trip which I shared with Rosemary. Since every batch contains at least one photograph with Rosemary I am again faced with attempting to comprehend how that smiling love of my life is no longer with me. In my brutal philosophic thought I say she is not while I am. And I grieve.

All these photographs and the ones from these two previous blogs (links below). They contain what I wrote about them when  I posted them in Italy

 
Florence - Siena - In its Ponderous Gloom - Charles Dickens 

 Tuscany - Florence - With a bright remembrance of it - Charles Dickens

Again stress how Rosemay kept teaching me about my craft even though she was not a photographer. Today, March 4, 2022 I  am a better photographer because of her.

 

 

The renaissance, so central to a Florence in a glorious past, makes me think of its translation into Spanish "renacimiento" which means literally a rebirth. That and the 18th century "siglo de las luces" or the century of lights make me mull over, while at the Florence airport on our way to Frankfurt, if I can re-inject some enthusiasm as I arrive in Vancouver, a city with air, space and water. Will Italy be an MSG that will linger or will it fade?

 

 

 Instead of getting off at the bus station from our Siena trip we opted to do so at the Arno. The walk to our hotel was a bit tough but we saw this. Tomorrow we wake up at 4 for our Air Canada 6:30 flight to Frankfurt, then Montreal and finally Vancouver. 

 

 Por atrás

 

 

Elegant simplicity and no hordes to marr it.

 

 

Foto permitted outside in this Siena establishment.

 

 

 

Rosemary in Siena after buying Italian Merino wool sweater at Benetton. She is wearing it.

 

 

This view is from the top and outside of Duomo di Siena. Fewer steps than the more famous Duomo in Florence.

 

 

 Romulus and Remus are everywhere in Siena, seen here at the Duomo di Siena.

 

 

 

I find that unintended shakes with my Galaxy A5 produce lovely results as this one in the Siena Museum.

 

 

 

This Lucrezia, circa 1510-1512, by Weimar artist Lucas Cronach amply made for me the dearth of Dürer.

 

This portrait of San Girolamo was the only painting or work by Dürer in a Siena exhibition on him. The rest of the works were by contemporaries.

 

 

 

This view in one of the Siena museums reminded me that perhaps our trip to Italy became a rest from my portraiture and that when we arrive in Vancouver, while tired, I may find myself refreshed.

 

 While I consider myself to be a portrait photographer I have been attracted to the elegant sobriety of a more modern Italian approach to colour that seems to avoid the reds of renaissance art.

 

 

 

Thursday, March 03, 2022

 

 This blog is the second of Rosemary and my trip to Italy in 2019 and recorded with my A5Galaxy. The first in link below

 Tuscany - Florence - With a bright remembrance of it - Charles Dickens

 

Tonight. Tomorrow after breakfast we will take a bus on one end of this bridge to go to the railway/bus station where we will board a bus for Siena. We are really ready for home and our cats Niño and Niña.

In the midst of the city - in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune - rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, and the Great Tower that watches over the whole town. In its courtyard - worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom - is a massive staircase that the heaviest wagon and the stoutest team of horses might be driven up. Charles Dickens - Pictures from Italy

 

 

Now that I know this I am going to have to pray for my daughter Hilary if her soul will be saved.

 

Rosemary tired on the way to the Stibbert.

 

 

This caught my eye, too. I inquired. It seems she was in a chain mail scheme.

 

 

She and the Murano.

 

She.

 

Mambrú se fue a la guerra.

 

At the Stibbert they had these red curtains...

 

 The weaponry at the Stibbert did not prevent me from noticing some fine details.

 

I believe the Stibbert dazzled me.

 

 A little corner at the Stibbert caught my eye.

 

My guess is that the Stibbert may have a collection of armour that tops the Met's in NY.

 

 

It was extremely hard to get to. We walked miles. But the Museo Stibbert was worth it. There were no hordes, just tons of armour collected by a man whose father had worked in the East India Company and had all the money.

 

A lovely Florentine tram. Unlike our Vancouver articulated buses it would not get stuck in the snow.

 

The other Alex.

 

From the school of Boticcelli at the Palazzo Vecchio.

Dante at the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio deciding on placing Steve Jobs in the lowest circle of the inferno.