Lens: Voigtlander nokton 50mm f1.1
Camera: NEX-7, ISO1600, f2.8, 1/80, raw
It was day nine of the project when for the first time I brought my NEX-7 to the Foro Italico, the city’s athletic field. I wanted to celebrate the place which gave birth to my former neighborhood, an area that played such an important role in my life. That shot was explored on Flickr, reaching and the 9th position for a couple of days (before falling to the 154th position just before being dropped out), long enough for me and the project to get a lot of attention and clicks. Now it is my tenth more clicked photo ever, fourteenth in interestingness (so says Flickr). The funny thing is, I don’t particularly like the photo, I don’t see “myself” in it…
Anyway, after almost a year I’m back in the same area. This time I’m returning to the new home, after having had dinner with my in-laws, Claudia is driving, the nokton is on the NEX-7, when I spot the night sandwich van (I really don’t know how to translate this…), a subject I wanted to shoot for the whole time I lived in the area but which I always fatally missed.
The night sandwich vans are very special places in Rome. This city gets shut down around two in the morning, and after that these are the main restorative solutions. Here’s where from two to five in the morning gather together those who don’t sleep (at night, or at all): students (I remember partying around till at least half past three every Saturday night until I started working), prostitutes (those who work at night, at least), night security guards, burglars, and weirdos. The sandwiches are prepared on the fly by unconvincing cooks, usually fat, smelly and dirty, a combination that earned these places the epithet of “Zozzone” (that is, scuzzy, grubby, filthy).
So, with this shot I feel that my personal photo album of the area is finally complete. I can’t say the same, however, of my new neighborhood…