Don’t worry- I’m not abandoning lensed photography with high-acutance, high-precision cameras. I love my Rolleiflex! What I am doing, though, is exploring pinhole photography and other forms of lo-fi photography (my previous post with the Lomo Belair triptychs for example). I find it quite liberating in many ways – you have to quit worrying about precision, and just make images. Live with the serendipitous. Like this first image. I’m absolutely blown away by what I pulled off with it – it’s actually a double-exposure. I’m going to play around more with the idea of multiple exposures on pinhole.
Foggy Bottom Metro, Waiting
Pinholes, although they are very slow in many ways, have some major advantages – because there is no glass to distort the image, they are absolutely rectilinear. Straight lines will always be straight lines. There’s no shutter or aperture to set with one – the pinhole is the aperture, and in the case of my pinhole camera, it’s f/208, which means that even in full sunlight I’m getting roughly 1 second – 2 seconds for exposure times. The shutter in this case is just the body cap – take it off, count one one thousand, put it back on. It doesn’t get simpler than that. Of course, this has a different downside – hand-holding exposures is not realistic, ever, unless you really really really love motion blur.
Pan-American Health Organization HQ
I like motion blur well enough, but I like it applied selectively – I like the contrast between sharp, static and moving, blurred. I like how using long time exposures captures a third dimension to a photograph, time, that we perceive as non-existent in “typical” photography where time is condensed/extracted to 1/500th of a second. Playing with time in a camera really does in a way turn the camera into a time machine. It also shows us that our concept of time is artificial. Things exist not IN time but rather THROUGH time.
I’ve been having so much fun lately with my photography. As it should be – it should never be WORK – it should be fun. And the Lomo Belair X/6-12 is part of the reason. Yeah, it’s lo-fi, it has a plastic fantastic lens, it’s auto-exposure with virtually no feedback (you never have any idea what shutter speed you’re using). But you’re shooting medium format panoramics! And for $250!! Where are you going to find a (useable) Brooks Veriwide or a Horseman 6×12 for $250? Even a 6×12 roll back for a 4×5 will set you back $400. So there’s a lot to like about it for the money.
And although the negatives themselves are, shall we say, less than razor-sharp, they do make awesome contact prints (witness my Roman panoramics and my recent Sinister Idyll series). This triptych was inspired by a vertical panorama series I saw someone else do. Theirs was a landscape, but I thought this office/apartment/retail complex in Washington DC would make a good urban subject to try it out on.
Columbia Plaza
Another fun experiment with my Lomo. This time a vertical panoramic triptych. I intentionally skewed the middle panel to give what is otherwise a very static subject some visual movement and dynamism.
H Street Northeast is a neighborhood in major transition. It was in the 1950s and 60s an important retail and entertainment corridor for the African-American community in DC, along with the U Street corridor in Northwest. Along came the 1968 Martin Luther King riots, and then in the 1970s and 80s the rise of the drug epidemics, and H Street turned into pawn shops, liquor stores, and abandoned buildings. In the early 2000s, property developers turned their eyes toward the area for the relative abundance of cheap real estate as the next new place they could revitalize and get rich in the process.
These first four shots here represent the old side of the neighborhood – liquor stores, barred windows and businesses that clung to life through the lean years.
Cold Beer & Wine1101 ConveniencePhyllis J OutlawS and S Shoe Repair
This set are the changing face of H Street – fresh paint, new entertainment venues, coffee shops and chic pubs.
Cirque Du RougeNomad Hookah BarSidamo Coffee & TeaThe New Drink
The not-so-visible dark underside to this is that the past residents (lower and middle income African-Americans) and the businesses they used to operate are being pushed out not only by the housing redevelopment that is driving real estate prices up by several hundred percent over the span of a decade or less, but by the changing retail landscape – when enough businesses on your street have gone from selling fifty-cent cups of coffee and five dollar lunch deals to six dollar cappuccinos and thirty dollar tasting menus, your old clientele aren’t coming around anymore. If you were already operating on a shoestring, it can be cost-prohibitive to reinvent yourself.
The Piazza Santa Cecilia is one of the focal points of my part of Trastevere. It is named after the eponymous church and convent that borders its west side. The lantern on #21 Piazza Santa Cecilia casts a long shadow in the light of dawn:
21 Piazza Santa Cecilia
The Piazza dei Mercanti abuts the Piazza Santa Cecilia. In this view as the sun sets and the street lamps come on, there’s not much to see of the piazza itself from all the cars parked in it, but a very large restaurant faces it that does a bustling business on a warm fall evening. A neighborhood resident is out for a stroll, perhaps on their way to the coffee bar up the street.
Piazza dei Mercanti, Evening, from the Piazza Santa Cecilia
Santa Cecilia’s courtyard remains open quite late into the evening, and the public can come and go through the gates. There has been a church on the site since the 3rd Century AD, when it was built over the location of St. Cecilia’s house. The main body of the church dates to the 13th Century, and some 9th century mosaics are preserved within. The facade and the courtyard are 18th century renovations, however.
Exterior, Gates to Santa Cecilia, Night
This cherub keystones the arch over the main gate to the courtyard.
Cherub, Santa Cecilia Courtyard
Inside the courtyard you can view the 18th century facade of the church, ancient mosaics and an ancient cantharus or water urn that now is the centerpiece to a fountain. The bell tower dates to the 12th Century, and looms over pretty much the entire neighborhood. Here young couples sit on the edge of the fountain to canoodle while admiring the church before wandering off to dinner or perhaps a more appropriate intimate location.
I rented an apartment at 38 Via Dei Genovesi in Trastevere for my stay in Rome. I wanted to get something of a more authentic Roman living experience rather than stay in a touristy hotel or b&b, without giving up the convenience of a central location. I got that in Trastevere – narrow cobblestone streets, populated with neighborhood restaurants frequented by locals and tourists alike, a little grocery store and bakery across the street, a coffee shop downstairs, and boutiques with interesting merchandise in the alleyways surrounding the apartment. Two blocks away was the street car that would take me to the Piazza Venezia, or the Trastevere train station in the other direction. Dante’s house in Rome was across the street from the street car stop.
The downsides? Well, the first one wasn’t so bad – I was on the fourth floor of what may well have been a 15th century building, so walking up and down it was. I wanted and needed the exercise. The second, that was my downfall, pardon the pun – there were down pillows on my bed, and as it turns out I am hyper-allergic to them. As in couldn’t really be in the same apartment with them, let alone use them. Also, for whatever reason, the apartment despite being four stories above the street, was exceptionally noisy. Pretty much twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Trash trucks would come rumbling through at 3 AM. That kind of noisy. I could deal with the people spilling out of the restaurants at midnight – that would be easy enough to sleep through for me. It’s the inorganic noises that get me. I would still highly recommend Trastevere as a fantastic neighborhood to stay in for all the above mentioned reasons – location, ambience, food – just not the apartment I stayed in.
How could you resist the charms of a neighborhood where THIS is a street? It makes you feel like any minute Robert Langdon is going to step out of a doorway and implore your assistance in solving another Renaissance Art code/murder mystery.
Twisty Alley, Trastevere
Street parking being somewhat at a premium, and garage parking extremely so, lots of people ride vintage bicycles around the neighborhood. Here’s one that belongs to a neighbor…
Chained Bike, Trastevere Alley
This flowering vine has been allowed to grow for possibly centuries until it has turned into a tree, swallowing the downspout and enveloping the wall, leaving room for the mailbox and its door just beyond.
Tree, Mailbox, Trastevere
Here a late-opening book shop is perused by a customer as night envelops the neighborhood.
Today, the remains of the Theater of Marcellus are visible beneath the fortified palazzo on top. At the time of its construction in 11 BC, it could hold 14,000 spectators. If the structural design looks familiar, it’s because it inspired the design of the Colosseum some 60 years later.
In the 1300s it was acquired by the Fabii family who turned it into a fortress. Later the Orsini family acquired it in the 16th century and hired an architect to convert it into a palazzo. The residential structure you see on the top three floors is that conversion. Today the palazzo has been divided up into multiple apartments. How cool would that be to live in a 16th century palace built on 1st century BC foundations?
Theater of Marcellus and ApartmentsApartments over the Theater of MarcellusArches, Theater of MarcellusApartments over the Theater of Marcellus
Under the heading of “who wears it better?” – Which works better, the black-and-white or the color?
Theater of Marcellus, Detail, Black-and-WhiteTheater of Marcellus, Detail, Color
Immediately behind the theater is the ruins of the temple of Apollo Sosianus (so named for the man responsible for reconstructing it in the style we see today). There was a temple to Apollo on this site since the 5th century BC. It was originally outside the main city boundaries because it was a foreign cult, imported from Greece. It sits directly across the Roman street from the Theater of Marcellus. Because of the proximity to the city walls, the Senate chambers and the theater, many backroom political deals were struck in its chambers.
Temple of Apollo Sosiano
The three columns you see today were re-discovered and re-erected in the 1930s after the demolition of an apartment building to re-expose to view the Theater of Marcellus. The columns’ pieces were found in the arcades of the theater. While they have been placed on the pedestal and re-topped with their capitals and frieze, it is highly unlikely that they are in their actual original positions.
In the Piazzale Caffarelli on the Capitoline Hill, there is this small fountain dedicated to those who have died in the cause of peace, both civilian and military. The little park is a quiet pause from the hustle and bustle of the city of Rome.
I spent almost half a day wandering around the Castel Sant’Angelo, poring over every vista, nook, cranny and fragmented rock. I was in photographic heaven. There’s everything inside it to point your lens at from Roman sculptures to fanciful brickwork to Renaissance paintings. The Castel Sant’Angelo is one of the most recognizable structures in Rome. The foundations of it date back over 2000 years to the reign of emperor Hadrian, who had it built as his mausoleum. In the Christian era, the proximity to St. Peter’s and the Vatican palace made it useful not only as a source of marble for construction of churches and apostolic palaces, but as a fortification. The drum-like structure was originally Hadrian’s tomb, and was covered in white marble. A succession of popes built on top of this, had walls with gun emplacements built around it, corridors cut through it, had palatial apartments added on top of it, and used Hadrian’s burial chamber as a dungeon for their most valuable/most hated prisoners. An elevated, sealed corridor with defensive structures runs atop a wall connecting the Vatican apartments to the Castel, enabling the pope to flee to the safety and security of the castle in times of siege. The castle has wells of its own and storage enough to keep its garrison provisioned for up to six months at a time.
This bastion overlooks the entrance gate of the castle that faces the Tiber river and the Angel bridge. Quite the fearsome looking structure, isn’t it?
Bastion, Castel Sant’Angelo
Here is perhaps the most famous view of the castle. The statues of angels were added to the bridge in the 16th and 17th centuries, but three of the five arches of the bridge are contemporary with the original construction of Hadrian’s mausoleum. So you’re crossing a 2000-year old span over the Tiber when you use the bridge.
Castel Sant’Angelo from across the Tiber
This is a view of the bridge from one of the outer bastions over the main gate to the castle. During the Jubilee year of 1450, so many pilgrims crammed onto the bridge that the railings gave way and many plunged into the river to their deaths. Starting in the 1530s, the angels that adorn the bridge began to be added.
Angel Bridge from the Castel Sant’Angelo
Looking down onto the footings of the bridge in the Tiber, we can see some interesting graffiti, particularly the figure of the man holding a woman’s prone form.
Angel Bridge Footings, Tiber River
This young man was playing his guitar for tips on the bridge. I think he was consulting his dog as to what to play next.
Busker and dog, Angel Bridge
Moving inside the fortification, these steps emerge from one of the bastion towers to the courtyard that encircles the central drum at its base.
Steps, Castel Sant’Angelo
Looking out a gun port in the fortifications of the castle, you can see the bridges over the Tiber in the distance.
Gun Port, Castel Sant’Angelo
A newel post topped with a stone sphere on the stairs leading from the inner courtyard toward the Papal apartments:
Stairs, Newel Post, Castel Sant’Angelo
These stairs lead to a structure that probably housed Papal guards. The stone lantern atop them is one of several around the fort.
Stairs, Lantern, Castel Sant’Angelo
A close-up detail of another one of the stone lanterns:
Stone Lantern, Castel Sant’Angelo
At the level of the upper courtyard, a statue of the Archangel Michael dominates. Opposite is one of several wells that keep the castle in fresh water in case of siege.
Archangel Michael, Castel Sant’Angelo
The fortification is crowned by a bronze statue of the Archangel Michael, drawing his sword. Modern additions have also placed radio aerials on the roof, overtopping the archangel. Technologia Omnia Vincit, as it were.
Up on the Capitoline Hill is the piazza designed by Michelangelo framed on two sides by the buildings of the Capitoline Museum and on the third by the seat of government for the city of Rome. To get to the piazza you must climb a set of marble stairs. At the foot of the stairs is a fountain in the shape of a sphinx, that would normally be jetting its water into the urn in front of it. The day I was there, it was windy and rainy, and the water jet was spraying off to the side and missing the urn.
Fountain in the Wind, Capitoline HIll
At the top of the steps, a pair of giant equestrian statues flank the staircase. These are, I believe, original Roman pieces on pedestals from the Renaissance. Certainly the style of carving and the general weathering and condition suggest an origin in antiquity.
Equestrian Statue, Capitoline Hill
In the center of the piazza is a Renaissance copy of a famous bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. The original is inside the Capitoline Museum. Passing between the City Hall and the Museum, you can descend the back side of the Capitoline Hill toward the Forum. Looking between the two buildings you can see the third-story bridge that connects them, and bears a resemblance to the Bridge of Sighs in Venice (although to the best of my knowlege the similarity is coincidental).
Bridge to City Hall, Capitoline Hill
As frustrating as it can be at times to be out photographing in the rain, it’s also kind of fun- it’s a very different atmosphere, and things look quite different than they do when it’s bright and sunny. Umbrellas create their own kind of patterns. People dress differently and move differently. You can really create contrast through use of color instead of having to have strong directional light.
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