Friday, November 30, 2012

Fantasmagoria II

Last posting for this month. November has been the most fruitful since this blog was born. I'm really satisfied and confident to have done a good job. I'v never been so present before. This is the first rule of any good blog in the World: catch the audience, keep them warm, feed them something new everyday. I shall probably get tired (or bored) of this one day. For the time being, let's play.



Fantasmagoria I

Stockholm, October 2008, a fantastic installation at Kulturhuset. A big surprise for a passer by as I always am. Young people were dancing in a tempest of words projected on the walls from several different points.
I thought I had lost forever these digital negatives, my first attempt to shoot in RAW mode with my (at the time) brand new camera. Indeed they were well stored in a folder I had forgotten. It was to like finding exposed films inside an old metal box taken at a flea market.



Monday, November 26, 2012

Permanent wanderers

I think this picture has nearly ten years. I can't recall exactly when. In my early digital times as photographer I was not so scrupulous as today. Some bad accidents to the disks and CD:s were I used to backup my images have made me a little more careful about the way I manage my personal files. At the time I remember I still had a cranky and bulky Kodak that wasn't unable to store information on the images capture time. For sure I took the picture in a small park, not far from where I live. At the time I probably already had my son born and I "had" to carry him around with the trolley during the last warm days of his life's first autumn.
Looking back at this one, now, I can't help but thinking to the hunger of pictures I had in those years. I used to shoot at almost everything and everyone, being in a permanent transport (or wandering) state. This man might have probably been sitting and thinking a little back to his life. I was doing more or less the same, without looking ahead.


Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Two steps around, outside the box

Time is always short. Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote in his "De brevitate vitae" (On the shortness of life) that we should consider how much of it we waste, instead of complaining about its scarcity. I basically agree with him but not always. This happens to me when I'm far from home, abroad for business (as they say, even though I'm everything but a business man). Customer first, of course, then leisure. First comes your job, the one that pays for you, then your curiosity, your anger of experience and knowledge.
When I have the chance to spent some days in another town time seems to be vanishing in my hands or, to use an abused metaphor, like sand flowing through the fingers. I'm always on the run and it happens that professional and personal goals can't be achieved at the same time. In these cases the second, having lower priority, are inevitable overlooked.
These are pictures taken on the top of a hill in Molndal a couple of years ago. I'm here again in these days but the weather and my schedule don't allow me to step out of the office during the day. So I went looking into my hard-disk and found some good pictures of some very intelligent lunch breaks I had spent in the past time.






Monday, November 19, 2012

On the sky ways again

Time to move again, time to fly, to spend endless hours waiting for your flight or running frantically from one end to the other of an airport. Time to move among new people and observe.


Friday, November 16, 2012

Phaedrus' lesson


Rana rupta et bos

Inops, potentem dum vult imitari, perit.

In prato quondam rana conspexit bovem,
et tacta invidia tantae magnitudinis
rugosam inflavit pellem. Tum natos suos
interrogavit an bove esset latior.
Illi negarunt. Rursus intendit cutem
maiore nisu, et simili quaesivit modo,
quis maior esset. Illi dixerunt 'bovem'.
Novissime indignata, dum vult validius
inflare sese, rupto iacuit corpore.

Phaedrus, Fabulae, Liber Primus,  XIV

Leafing through the pages of an on-line Latin library, this evening, I found this short, simple and meaningful Aesopian style fabula  from Phaedrus. Beside taking me back to the time of my early Latin studies (which, to be honest, were not so brilliant until I understood its universal beauty and started devouring stacks of Latin writers' books), it makes me think to the recent evolution of my professional career. In these days, I'm spending eight hours a day delving into thousands of code lines, pulling and connecting thousands of virtual wires and writing more and more text lines every day.
This is not exactly what I've been aiming at in the recent years. Yet, I must confess that I find this "practice" somehow comfortable, as it's been the kind of work I've been doing for more than ten years, before. I'm used at it, in some extent I'm a master (a "specialist") at doing it. But this doesn't necessarily mean that I should do it for the rest of my life. The underlying risk is to give out the message that this is the kind of things I love to do and excel.
No. It is not exactly like this. I can do more (and I demonstrated it several times) but, probably, I aimed at the wrong direction or with the wrong weapons.
I think I've already written something about, here, so I won't linger too much on this again. If anyone wants to know some more, then it's the right opportunity to read some of my recent posts. This short poem from Phaedrus injected (or refreshed) me the doubt that I was not simply felt as "not-ready-yet" but rather as "unable" (inops). I don't find this frustrating, as someone dared and tried to convince me, I find it ... irritating, a real dive into disillusion. Feels like I was certain having passed the shadow-line, turned back to see what I was leaving back and ... found myself in the dark again.

For the very first time I'm feeling the need for a big change.

No pictures today.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Mnemosyne by Anita Balogh

Anita is an old pal of 591 Blog Photography living in the area surrounding Budapest. She's just delivered this still movie with an impressive sound-track.


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Aker Brygge

Oslo, when a shallow pool is all you need. This place was once a shipyard where old sailing ships used to dock and drop their loads of good from the rest of the world. Now it is an expensive district made of glass, concrete and steel stretching into the harbor along the Oslo fjord. Even though the district around has abundant stretches of land these modern heirs of the vikings still look into the sea the only option to grow and evolve. Magic of water.


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Dinner at Christiania

Oslo, enough years ago not to remember exactly when it was. After a couple of hours spent walking around the downtown and the restyled and tourist populated shipyards of Aker Brygge, searching for a good place where to sit and eat, I stumbled upon this high-street restaurant standing close to the Parliament House of Norway. I had seen this place all the times I had been in Oslo before but, always being alone, I never had will and courage to enter and sit among tables filled with people happily celebrating some recurrence, business men perfecting a deal with a good glass of wine and couple of lovers having one of their life best moments. It must have been the summer light or ... I don't know. This time I went in, took a seat and treated myself. A sublime experience, I recall.


Friday, November 9, 2012

Re-entering Kymlinge


Four years ago, on this same day, I entered for the first time the Stockholm underground "ghost" (never opened) station of Kymlinge on a personal assignment I had taken with Ulf for the opening of 591 Photography Blog. This station is ten minutes walk away from Kista, a Stockholm northern district where my company headquarters are. Four years after I'm still here, 591 is growing every day, Kista ... well, concrete and charcoal are growing as well but, just two days ago, more than 1000 people were announced to be laid off. The ghost station could be crowded all at once.


Kista Science Tower


Entering Kymlinge


Where the Ghosts live


A last look at the train line 


Back in my hotel room

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Shooting Stars

There are some who look constantly forward for something to aim at, without  necessarily understanding how to get there and some others who say that "the route and the time spent to walk it, not the goal, is the most important part of a journey". And, finally, there are those who answer back that "without a goal no one would ever start any journey ... ". They're all right.


Monday, November 5, 2012

Belvedere


Cycling Word Championship 2009, Mendrisio (CH)


I've had a unique chance to attend, as cycling fan and practitioner, the Road World Championship race not far from where I live for two consecutive years: Varese 2008 and Mendrisio 2009. In both cases I was there with my son, Flavio, who I hope will keep the memory of such events alive with him. Two unique events, people coming from everywhere in the World and melting aside the streets with their colorful jackets and flags, drinking, singing out loud, dancing, enjoying this side-show more than the same race.
At the end of the event I spotted this Norwegian guy happily saluting the mass from the roof of an hotel reception. If I well remember their prominent athlete had won the silver medal. Now, "Belvedere" in italian (consider that Mendrisio is in the southern border of Ticino, the Italian speaking Swiss canton) stands for a "nice panorama". When I see this picture I still can't help but lough.
I realize just now that I never showed it to one of my friends in Norway. :-)

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The biscuits factory





The are pictures from the Museum of the Industries of Saronno, the town where me and my family have been living in the last twelve years. There was a reknowned biscuit factory in town till few years ago. From here cardboard and tin boxes used to start their travel to the tables of kids and others lovers of cakes in the World. Then someone decided it would have been better to move the whole somewhere else, where making biscuit is by far less expensive. What remains now of the old glory of the town are just few machines perfectly maintained but no longer able to make a single biscuit.

The hangman


This muppet was made by my son Flavio, who won the Halloween homeworks contest held  yesterday in his primary school.