Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: Rob C on September 21, 2016, 03:08:23 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJG0MTgAuMI
Rob C
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Solo parlare un po Italiano, ma molto interessante. Grazie, Rob!
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Solo parlare un po Italiano, ma molto interessante. Grazie, Rob!
I had an Italian grandmother and spoke both English and Italian equally well - or badly - until I went to school (I've been told). Then I had French for some years and found myself capable enough with it during my first independent venture to France when I was nineteen.
After that, I promptly forgot all about it until pro life took me back to shoot a calendar, when I realised that though I could still read it, I couldn't any longer understand a single word the French actually spoke!
As for Italian, I learned that my Italian was really Veneto, not quite an Italian dialect but a parallel language akin to what was to become politically correct Italian.
Moving to Spain further complicated everything, and in the end I feel I speak Mediterranean rather than anything more precise and geographically settled.
Unfortunately, all of this mental jumbling of the cards has resulted in an inability to write these languages other than as a phonetic interpretation which looks terrible. On the plus side, French apart (unless spoken slowly and distinctly, without running words straight into one another), I can get by quite happily pretty much in any of those countries.
I suppose that all of the above makes me a bit of a round peg, never quite fitting in anywhere. But I don't really mind that very much, as the positives have well outweighed the negatives in life.
Glad you enjoyed the piece; I also found Virginia's neckline quite as fascinating as Gardin's words. And man, was she aware!
Rob
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He has quite slow and gentle Italian, I'll have to make the time to see how far I get. So far I followed up until he explained that his dog is like a cat :-)
Rob, I know some Swiss-Germans who thought they could understand French until they came to France... the speed and the accents make it much more challenging than their tests in Geneva.
Whereas Italian tends to be the opposite: I thought I was hopeless in Australia, then discovered that everyone there was speaking Siciliano or Calabrese... whereas in Italian Italian I could at least stumble about. Way out of practice though :-(
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My father was an American soldier, meeting my mother in Berlin shortly after the war. As an army brat, we moved every three years between the USA and Germany. My sisters and I were fortunate to have been raised to be bilingual. One sister now lives between Rom and Naples and it’s from my brother-in-law, that I picked up my (rudimentary) Italian. Sadly, I was lazy in school and never studied French or Spanish.
My niece now lives in Barcelona and I’m forced to speak (broken) Italian with her husband. Spanish and Italian are basically similar but often dramatically different! But I sometimes find understanding English in Birmingham (England) more challenging than Italian! I’m there a few times a year to play snooker.
While working for an Israeli company for some 10 years, I picked up some words in Hebrew, for a time I could even read it somewhat. Not as difficult as it may seem. But I haven’t had any practice for years.
My girlfriend lives near Gdansk and I’m now trying to learn Polish. That’s one heck of a challenge! Luckily, she speaks excellent English, her mother German and her dog just wags his tail regardless which language I use.
It’s such an advantage to speak a second or third language!
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her dog just wags his tail regardless which language I use.
My cat declines to show any comprehension of any language, although he tells me he loves me very much around food-time.
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My cat declines to show any comprehension of any language, although he tells me he loves me very much around food-time.
Cats are special. My sister's bugs me at 04:30 and wants to cuddle, then I throw her out. At feeding time she can become a far greater pest that the two dogs. ;D
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Cats are indeed 'special' in that they appear to care absolutely nothing about anything beyond themelves.
During the 80s we took in two kittens abandoned by their mother in front of our terrace. I kid you not: the mother walked them past our place, looked up at our dog, a large Alsabrador with magnificent teeth, and decided, there and then, that she'd found them the perfect refuge. She simply vanished, never to return, mystifying her brood as much as she did us. So we had to feed 'em, provide an old wine box for bed, and take on a new responsibility where moving to Spain had, we fondly imagined, meant fewer rather than more of 'em.
That mother knew well what she was about: the kittens were both female.
In time, we were feeding about twenty-five or so cats, which meant buying junk from the butcher, lots of rice, making awful smells in the kitchen and filling a large cooking tray with the resulting filler each and every day for years. The society of cats we fed was in that odd state of being neither tame nor 100% wild. In time, one or two of them would actually jump up onto a lap when we were stretched out on the terrace on a lounger, but never the males. In fact. they wouldn't allow us to touch them in company of other cats, but were they alone, they seemed perfectly happy to be stroked. Macho rules everywhere, I'm afraid. But, whilst they lived as a gang, there was never any marking of territory on our property. But oddly enough, they are actually very prone to disease: so many died as kittens from what I see as a form of feline influenza: they just sneezed to death. Others picked up some eye disease that burst the eye like a grape. It didn't kill them, usually, but several of the old ones lived out their lives with a single eye. I doubt they would have made it without our intervention via the feeding tray. But one never knows. All I can say is that, wild or not, every single one had a name, and our hearts went thud at each and every death.
If there's a real problem, it's in their killer instinct: they denude gardens of birds. They even kill innocent lizards that stray too low down the wall.
Rob
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Yep, un-neutered cats are a major issue. vets are coming on board providing minimal cost neutering and vaccinations to encourage adoption.
A photographer friend has two adopted kittens, one of whom had the burst-eye syndrome in both eyes. Ironically, he's named Mamiya (when he still had twin lens vision).
The remarkable thing is that he still chases balls around the house, steals toys from the dog etc etc. Wathing the video, you would never guess he was blind.
The other big issue now is FIV, a feline version of HIV. No cross infection possible with humans, but cats give it to each other by biting in fights. Then they can last years or months.
Poor Erik, who was a wonderful friendly cat, wasted away completely over about 9 months.
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While working for an Israeli company for some 10 years, I picked up some words in Hebrew, for a time I could even read it somewhat. Not as difficult as it may seem. But I haven’t had any practice for years.
When my then girlfriend and I traveled through the Middle East in the mid-'80s we studied Ivrit (Hebrew) twice weekly for a few months while staying at a moshav (a kibbutz-like village but with a dose of capitalism), and also studied Torah with an American-born rabbi who became a good friend. I can speak and read the language not too badly, though without the same ease as in my 20s. And I can still recite the bereshit bara Elohim…* all the way out to the end of the seventh day. :) [Edit: I just tried this and got stuck pretty quickly. Time for a refresher!] I had less opportunity to learn Arabic, but I know a bit. And I know the numerical symbols due to all the bus riding we did in Cairo.
-Dave-
*Typically translated "In the beginning God (Elohim) created…", but this is static while the original has a more dynamic it's happening now vibe and can be better rendered as "When God began creating…" or "At the start of God's creating…" or even "As God begins creating…". In our Torah class we spent a good three hours on the first sentence of the text. 8) Fascinating stuff, the narrative parts of the Torah, full of lovely poetry and also of linguistic puns that no translation, certainly not the stiff King James, can do justice to.
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Bellissimo Rob, Grazie mille!
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Bellissimo Rob, Grazie mille!
Prego!
There was really a wealth of late 40s - 50s Italian photographers working in the neo-realism manner; along with the film directors they were an amazing bunch of creatives. Cinecittà was a wonderful breeding ground for talent. It supported so many photographic talents, one of whom being this lady, though I may have linked to her before:
http://www.chiarasamugheo.com/4.aspx?sr=10
In the fashion world, Mondadori used to publish Linea Italiana, which one of my clients imported for his fashion buyers to study. It left Vogue sitting in the dust. Thick, beautifully designed (as you could expect!) it used amazing photographers from all over the world, but mainly Italians. I never saw the magazine after that client was moved on to fix another company within his group. Just one of the few people you are lucky to meet in life, who turn out to be instrumental in giving you the opportunities to make good work and progress along your own route to wherever you are going.
One day, when the lottery comes to me properly, stops flirting with just enough encouragement for a coffee or two, I shall decamp and live in Rome for the rest of the time God allows me.
Though I used to love watching Montalbano, I think I'd rather the mainland, even though I uses to look at all those left-uneaten seafood pasta meals with envy. Living on an island as long as I have has cured me of its attractions. I want to be able to get in the car and just go! Hail Route 66 as was.
And Rome's new mayor is quite an attractive lady! What more does anybody need?
;-)
Rob
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Can't remember if I posted these links a while ago or not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q98Mm6xD6Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYhqh_cMVt8
Rob
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Rob, I enjoyed the second film. Gardin's images are great, filled with emotion. I understood much of what he explained, will Need to ask my brother-in-law though about some details once I visit my sisiter in Italy again. Thanks for the link!
So many interesting interviews on you tube! Hopefully I'll be able to watch more once I retire (mid 2020).
The first film is blocked here in Germany (as so many).
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I had an Italian grandmother [...]
As for Italian, I learned that my Italian was really Veneto, not quite an Italian dialect but a parallel language akin to what was to become politically correct Italian.
If you know the dialect, or better, as you have rightly said, the language of Veneto, you can read some of the most important italian writers...
Angelo Beolco called Il Ruzante (15th cent.), Carlo Goldoni (18th cent.), Biagio Marin, Andrea Zanzotto, Luigi Meneghello (all XX-XXIth cent.).
After WWII Luigi Meneghello went to England where he taught italian literature (University of Reading) until his retirement. "Libera nos a Malo" (Malo is his native village in the province of Vicenza) is a great classic of the contemporary "Italian" literature, as well as "Pomo Pero". But In order to read them you have to know both languages (italian and that of Veneto...), I myself had some difficulty to read them. There is an english edition of Libera nos a Malo.
http://www.reading.ac.uk/AcaDepts/li/new/meneghello2.htm (http://www.reading.ac.uk/AcaDepts/li/new/meneghello2.htm)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deliver-Us-Northwestern-World-Classics/dp/0810127423/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476459996&sr=8-1&keywords=Luigi+Meneghello (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deliver-Us-Northwestern-World-Classics/dp/0810127423/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476459996&sr=8-1&keywords=Luigi+Meneghello)
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If you know the dialect, or better, as you have rightly said, the language of Veneto, you can read some of the most important italian writers...
Angelo Beolco called Il Ruzante (15th cent.), Carlo Goldoni (18th cent.), Biagio Marin, Andrea Zanzotto, Luigi Meneghello (all XX-XXIth cent.).
After WWII Luigi Meneghello went to England where he taught italian literature (University of Reading) until his retirement. "Libera nos a Malo" (Malo is his native village in the province of Vicenza) is a great classic of the contemporary "Italian" literature, as well as "Pomo Pero". But In order to read them you have to know both languages (italian and that of Veneto...), I myself had some difficulty to read them. There is an english edition of Libera nos a Malo.
http://www.reading.ac.uk/AcaDepts/li/new/meneghello2.htm (http://www.reading.ac.uk/AcaDepts/li/new/meneghello2.htm)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deliver-Us-Northwestern-World-Classics/dp/0810127423/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476459996&sr=8-1&keywords=Luigi+Meneghello (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deliver-Us-Northwestern-World-Classics/dp/0810127423/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476459996&sr=8-1&keywords=Luigi+Meneghello)
" The result of this marriage of cultures was a Department of Italian that was and felt different from any other: a community of friends who worked – to quote Meneghello himself – “in all seriousness, yet with the impression that their work was at its best when it was most like playing.”
Thank you for the links, muntanela, and I just quoted the above because it instantly struck me as being exactly what I meant in another thread, about professional photography (in my own era, and tiny part of photography) when it seems to be working well. You could say that then it's better than sex, and certainly lasts a lot longer! (Speaking for myself, of course. YMMD.) ;-)
Rob
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http://www.colorivivacimagazine.com/2016/03/httpwww-colorivivacimagazine-com201508leonard-freed/
https://www.google.es/search?q=leonard+freed&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=hdj-U_2bA4TF0QXz7YDwAw&sqi=2&ved=0CCMQsAQ&biw=1249&bih=886#facrc=_&imgrc=KMgFoc6wTuasPM%3A
Rob C
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I'm not well traveled at a all. But about 6 years ago I took my family to Italy primarily due to my interest in Italian cooking which is a passion of mine. So we skipped the typical locations and spent all of our time in Parma, Modena, Bologna and the local country side. About 6 months prior to the trip I got the Rosetta Stone language program. I loved it and highly recommend it as a crash course. Along with some workbooks and dictionaries and daily study I was able to communicate on a very basic level and could read okay. I watched Italian movies with subtitles (Felini). All of which was great because the folks in this region did not speak much if any English which seemed to embarrass and in one case, panic them. But when I at least attempted to communicate in Italian they not only seemed relieved but they also warmed up immediately. We found the people of Emilia-Romagna to be exceptionally warm, gracious and friendly. I know they are that way by nature but knowing a little of their language sure did seem to break the ice.
We saw few if any Americans there, which was nice. We saw little high art or culture (compared to Rome, Venice, etc.) but that is not why we went. We went for the food and the cooking and boy did we go to the right place. The wonderful people was an unexpected benefit.
I'm rusty now. Need to get Rosetta Stone out and practice again. Italian children's story books also helped me. Of course, what I really need to do is go back!
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:)
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I think a problem for photographers, even if they have the laguage, is company: I believe you really have to tavel alone. That way, there are two stark choices: stay in your hotel cell and do nothing, wasting the entire journey, or go out and get into life. A partner turns it all too easily into a holiday.
It's the same at home: even one person along is one person too many if photography is what you want to do at that moment. People put a pressure on you: to sit down and have a coffee; go somewhere else - to move because they might be getting bored or you don't want them to get bored; they want to have a conversation and all you want to do is look, and you don't even know what you hope to see. It's just too many extraneous mental responsibilities. Or that's just me.
Of course, the above's about when you are trying to do something for yourself.
Rob
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I agree Rob. I normally travel with my wife and the expressed purpose of the travel is vacation time for both of us. Photography is a distant second, at best, on the priority list.
So I do two things. First, catch as catch can which usually results in few if any keepers. Second, I get up early and go out alone for an hour or so. That gives me a little time to concentrate on photography without turning it into a 'photo trip' which my wife doesn't care for much.
Rarely, we will make an excursion purely for photography purposes and she will grudgingly be my assistant and gear mule. Very, very rarely.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLEbP5MrELM
This is based on the movie La Grande Bellezza which is a recent film based on the Fellini one, La Dolce Vita.
I watched the new one a year or so ago, but it's vanished off the Internet - at least, last time I wanted to relive it I was foiled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbNCGU5Jzpg
Rob
P.S.
How I adore these thirty/forty-something faces of European women; so much sophistication, so much 'knowing'...
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More on Chiara Samugheo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkUWueFgJy8#t=15.274846
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuoVxCSVKVQ#t=148.673834
Rob
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https://ak-star.it/2017/05/15/professione-fotografo/
http://www.scarfiotti.com/index
I looked up Gian Luigi Scarfiotti after a heads/up from John Brewton, a fellow LuLander. I refer you to the piece on violins.
;-)
Rob C
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utd9cHBPfRA
From a more gentle age...
Rob
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utd9cHBPfRA
From a more gentle age...
Rob
All the italians (males, including my father, and females) fell in love with her.
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All the italians (males, including my father, and females) fell in love with her.
Indeed, she brings out innocence, and also the better side of the "protective" male... who'd probably be the exact opposite, given half a chance!
In a way, she brings back to me the closing scenes of La Dolce Vita, where Marcello is on the beach at Fregene, and the young girl who worked in the restaurant he'd been to earlier on is waving and saying something to him across a distance... he can't hear her nor she him. God, that's so representative of so many situations in life. No wonder Fellini and Antonioni were so respected by discerning audiences: they could touch you where your soul lived rather than force you to wallow in mindless slush and violence. Gone are those wonderful days...
Having thought of that Dolce scene, my head goes back to this, which just shows you how old heads work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kz42oFVBNg
"He couldn't swim the raging river 'cause the river was too wide
He couldn't reach Little White Dove, waiting on the other side
In the moonlight he could see her, blowing kisses, 'cross the waves
Her little heart was beating faster, waiting there for her brave"
Ahhh...
Rob
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Indeed, she brings out innocence, and also the better side of the "protective" male... who'd probably be the exact opposite, given half a chance!
In a way, she brings back to me the closing scenes of La Dolce Vita, where Marcello is on the beach at Fregene, and the young girl who worked in the restaurant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kz42oFVBNg
Rob
Good !
Valeria Ciangottini
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Good !
Valeria Ciangottini
Yes! Thank you, I never knew her name... How I love the look of innocence; so lovely after all the crap that fills this messy old world of ours as people lose that, and become far too self-aware and ambitious.
Found this; says it all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU2xhRYeJa8#t=127.138479
If it doesn't break your heart, you're already dead inside.
For anyone who hasn't seen the film, a very rapid look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpJt2oBJjnU
I often wish we'd made the decision to go live in or near Rome instead of here. The name of my website derives from that. My mother was living there... One of the things I remember most clearly about that first rip was seeing a row of Rolleiflexes for sale in a shop window and being too poor to buy one. They were very, very hard to find in Scotland in those days, what with import restrictions and everything else. In the end I found a second-hand Rollei T, and that stretched my then limits!
Even in the 60s or 70s we had restrictions: was a time I wanted to buy a 50mm wide for my 'blad and it couldn't be done: the deal was that you could buy the camera with the lens bundled. Fortunately, the dealer agreed that that was bullshit, so he sold the lens separately. For some reason I had no such problems buying the 150mm. Some restrictive laws are simply madness. I'm guessing it was a law, and not a Hassy scheme to sell more bodies!
Rob