Tag Archives: Tuscany

MAY 7, 2015

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What Catches the Eye

Who knows why any one stops any time, anywhere? Why this trough, which is probably a truck tire track, filled with rain water in a gravel-bedded parking area. But there it is, the puzzle that all photographers deal with all the time. Something catches the eye, with no rational reason for it. Maybe it was the color of the light as the day waned, which, when seen against the new green of the hills at that hour set off the slightly warmer feel of the gravel, or perhaps it was the piece of sky that made its poem in the trough, falling to earth in a way that made me pause. These are the mysteries of this remarkable medium that so many of us are in dialogue with, and that makes it is so compelling.

So the dialogue continues.

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MAY 6, 2015

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Simple things

A late evening walk after a soft rain. Gianni accompanied us so we could all catch up with the events of the season we had spent in France. Suddenly he leaped over the edge to grab some flowers. His spirit, and the joy he takes in everything, reminded me of why we love Tuscany so much.

It’s not only nature that calls to us, but a friendship with a man of this land whose connection  to it is so natural and deep that it has added a respect for all things Tuscan to our way of thinking. And out of that has come a kind of image making that is open and relaxed and about daily pleasure. And so portraits and gestures, and landscapes, and still lives, and the simplest of daily comings and goings mark my days. Everything seems photographable.

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MAY 5, 2015

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Contadini

In Tuscany we live on a working farm, and now (2015) we have been here for a whole year, but back when this ‘every day for a year’ series was begun we were there for only 6 months. We became part of the small community formed by Silvia and Vincenzo, a mid 40’s couple who work the land in the old spirit of the contadini’s of the era of padrones, when the system was not too far removed from the serfdom of the middle ages. There are a few other people right nearby who form this little enclave of about a dozen of us, of which we are the stranieri, outsiders.

Silvia was making pizza in their wood fired outdoor oven, a relic of the 18th century when their house was built.To see them work the oven and how easily they move as a team, including their 10 year old son Giuseppe, who ladled the sauces on each pizza, was a gift, as was the pleasure of devouring the pizzas afterward. All the sauces and meats and cheese came from their farm, and I cannot tell you how sweet and true the flavors were.

This image is merely a description of one step of the process. The cows below sometimes make their way into the pizza too.

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