Lens: Voigtlander color-skopar 35mm f2.5
Camera: NEX-7, ISO800, f2.5, 1/10, raw
Today I was back earlier than usual from the office. I think it was five or half past five in the afternoon. Claudia and Agata were at my in-laws and would have not be back before eight. I parked the car. The cleaning lady was probably still in the house. I didn’t want to bother her. Instead, I went for a walk to the grocery store, were I bought a Corona beer and a Kellogg’s snack bar. Then I walked to the little garden in Piazza Jan Palach and I sat on a sunny bench.
While in London, my cousin Giulia showed us her Kindle. Claudia fell in love with it. It’s really a great little and cheap device. The e-ink technology makes it a pleasure to read under the sun, where any other tablet of pda or phone get simply unreadable. I bought two of it from Amazon.
So now I am sitting on this bench, the sun is warming me up from behind the branches. I open the beer with the car keys, and I take the Kindle out of the backpack. I am reading this great book, “Ti prendo e ti porto via”, by Niccolò Ammaniti. It has been translated in english with the title “Steal you away”. This is the first book of Ammaniti that I read, but I love the author because some of the books he wrote were transformed in great movies by the Italian director Gabriele Salvatores. Please watch them: if you do not understand Italian, I am sure you can find the english subtitles. “Io non ho paura” is very famous, but I love “Come Dio comanda”. I think it somehow changed the way I photograph. Great stuff, you have to believe me.
It is six when eventually I finish the beer. I return home. Nobody in, just the dog, in the kitchen. The place is full of boxes. And yet, it feels empty. All the shelves are empty. All the tables. Some of the furnitures are packed. Movings put me in a melancholic state. I go to the studio. The shutter rolls aren’t completely down, and a few sun rays run horizontally throughout the room, till they hit the black leather chair in front of the empty bookshelves on the opposite side. I take a shot of the scene. I love the light. I need a human figure, but there’s nobody else but me in the house and the thing won’t change till night. It’s time for a self portrait.