Copyright: Gianni Berengo Gardin

Posted on May 18, 2011 by The Daily Cure

It’s grey in Milan, today. Threatening to rain. But this is a Milan I love—black, white and gray. It’s a city to be photographed monochromatically—desaturated, elemental, reduced to geometry and emotion. And so, for the umpteenth time, Gianni Berengo Gardin comes to mind, a photographer I have meant to share with you many times, a photographer who has captured the soul of this country so well and preserved it in black and white.

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Berengo Gardin was one of the first whose work I came to know when I moved here, and his images, like good friends, gave me a way to understand this country. I believe he is loved here, and generally considered to be the master of some of the most representative images of Italians and Italian life for the past 50 years. I owe him what many of us owe photographers we will never meet: gratitude for giving me a grip on my very own humanity and an understanding of the context in which I myself am now a player.

Posted in ITALY, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tagged | 3 Comments

Confession #5: The way it is today

Posted on May 16, 2011 by The Daily Cure

I’ve been in Italy 13 years this Spring. My dog, whom we got shortly after I got here, is 13 years old. Hobbling. I’m 13 years older than the love-struck young thing who leapt across an ocean. I’ve been 13 years—aside from vacations back in the U.S.—away from friends, family, a familiar culture and a language that allows me to be myself 100% of the time.

So, I just have to say this: I miss you. I miss the country. I miss American English. I miss the way we dress and the way we strike up conversations at the drop of a hat and the way “democracy” informs the way we view ourselves and other people, despite what they wear. I miss living where the national uniform—jeans—hides our differences. Where casual goes.

I miss Southern accents, my own included. I miss saying “y’all.” I miss streets that flow in grids, neatly pointing toward north, south, east and west. I miss being there when rivers floods and tectonic plates shift; I miss being among my own people when disaster strikes. I miss my sister-in-law and my brother and my mother. I miss knowing that my aunt is only an 8-hour drive away—a drive I would love to make, radio blaring, coffee at the ready. I miss going back to my father’s house and sitting among his books and things. I miss driving around, watching America be America and Americans be Americans. I miss being American among others like me.

There’s a lot about America that concerns me, a lot that I don’t miss, but right now—who can say why?—I miss it with all my heart. I miss it so much.

Posted in CONFESSIONS, ITALY | 13 Comments

Closed/Week in review

Posted on May 15, 2011 by The Daily Cure

Monday
“Keeping time, beautifully”
In which we appreciate an Italian watch we can’t own,
and download a time-keeping screensaver that we can.
(Read this.)

Tuesday
“Hit the road, Jacques”
In which a “mille borne” on French national route 958
reminds us of a card game we once loved.
(Read this.)

Wednesday
“Lugano color story #1: Black and cream”
In which we notice that everything that catches our
eyes is black and cream and tones in between.
(Read this.)

Thursday
“Milan Color Story #5: Magenta, literally a color story”
In which we take a closer look at the origin
of the color magenta and are amazed by what we find out.
(Read this.)

Friday
“A postscript to my last post”
In which a reference to Paul Rand
is—sort of—explained.
(Read this.)

Saturday
“It’s your (un)lucky day”
In which I break a rule and post on a Saturday
to examine Friday the 13th and/or 17th.
(Read this.)

Posted in WEEK IN REVIEW | Leave a comment

It’s your (un)lucky day

Posted on May 14, 2011 by The Daily Cure

OK. I meant to post this yesterday, but I got overwhelmed with “things” and, quite frankly, forgot. What a lousy blogger, when I can’t even say things on the days they are relevant, right? Wrong! Because today, I lived through a day (I’ve got 4 hours left in it, so I shouldn’t make such confident declarations, should I?) which further proved the point I was going to make.

Yesterday, was “Friday the 13th,” for you in the United States who were lucky enough to survive it (as you have your entire lives). Here, in Italy, it was a perfectly normal and uninteresting day. No cause for alarm. No cause for worry. Not a soul was concerned. No one avoided certain experiences or streets or routes which have proven difficult in the past. No one procrastinated proposals of marriage, thinking that the date might influence a negative response. Because, here, in Italy (here in the land of suspicion-raised-to-the-level-of-a-national-passtime) Friday the 13th has no significance whatsoever. Elevators all stop on the 13th floor. And as far as I know, Alitalia planes still have seats in the 13th row. Every day of the month could be Friday the 13th, and Italians would sleep easy.

No. The problem, of course, is Friday the 17th! Venerdì il 17! That’s when you really have to worry. That’s the day you have to stay in bed! At least according to Italians. And I have quickly found three reasons why on an Italian chat site:

1. If you write 17 in Roman numerals, you will write XVII. This, rearranged, is VIXI, which meant to the Romans “I have lived,” or “I lived.” Ho vissuto. Past tense. Been there, done that. In other words, I am now dead. And no one wants to be dead, not really (right?). Still, that doesn’t explain the significance of the Friday. Just the unluckiness of the number 17.

2. Another theory combines the separate significance of the two parts of the day. First, Christ was crucified on a Friday. Second, The Flood (capital T, capital F) began on the 17th day of the month. Put them together and what have you got? Disaster on a personal and universal scale.

3. And yet another hypothesis…Friday the 17th was the day that Filippo Il Bello (Philip the Beautiful) ordered the extermination of the Templar Knights.

I doubt the veracity of all of the above, even though I find them all fascinating and worthy of another novel by Dan Brown. And I refute them all with my own observations: Yesterday was beautiful, flawless, happy and productive. Today was, from beginning to end, shitty, fraught with difficulty, error, misunderstanding and slight depression. So I put forth this proposal: from now on, Saturday the 14th is to be avoided. What say you?

P.S. I ordinarily don’t post on Saturday. But this just wanted to come out. Maybe my luck is changing. In which case, I’ll be amending that last paragraph.

[If you enjoyed this post, you might also like “It’s your lucky day.“]

Posted in ITALY, THEY SAY | Tagged , | 3 Comments

A postscript to my last post

Posted on May 13, 2011 by The Daily Cure

A comment left in response to the last post questioned the connection between the color magenta and Paul Rand. This connection is clearly a leap of my own (messy attic that it is) brain. For some reason, the color magenta and its importance in the 4-color printing process bring to my mind the design and illustration work of American modernist Paul Rand who used it boldly alongside mostly primary colors, pure green and black. While Rand has nothing to do with the focus of this blog, I love it that a discussion about the French and Italian significance of a color leads me right back to my native roots and passions:

2 Comments

Write Man Ray’s life story

Posted on May 11, 2011 by The Daily Cure

In my post this morning, I mentioned as an afterthought the interactive online competition to create the imaginary biography of Man Ray. After investigating further, I happened upon this page of the competition which illustrates more precisely how it works. Each week, the organizers have released a Man Ray image with a set of questions to be answered. The following week, viewers have been asked to comment and/or vote on the submissions. At the end of the competition, Man Ray’s fictitious life story will be pieced together from the winning weekly submissions, and an overall winner will be selected. I don’t know if there’s still time to submit a story for the latest image (I don’t think so), but there is ample time to comment and vote. It sounds like even comments will be considered for prizes, which are—inconveniently for those of you in the U.S.—free tickets to the exhibit. Nevertheless, an interesting idea.

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Lugano color story #1: Black and cream

Posted on May 11, 2011 by The Daily Cure

Today, a story from the archives. Rewind to that March day-trip to Lugano.

Under undecided skies, the lakeside city (or is it a town?) of Lugano revealed its true duo-toned heart to me. After having taken several photographs, I realized there was a theme to what was attracting my eye. Quite without realizing it, I’d collected a small black-and-cream story.


The first thing to draw my attention, was a somber, little street café, empty at the moment, but ready to receive the lunch crowd with its battered bistro chairs and ivory table clothes still creased from ironing and folding. Proper yet inviting. An image of stillness despite the energy of passing pedestrians.

The next thing that grabbed my attention was the basket of eggs. This was before Easter, and I had to study them to determine whether they were real or made of chocolate. The chocolate stores were also full of speckled eggs, but these were among the wares of an outside vendor, selling also yogurt and cheeses and butter. They are, if I’m not mistaken, quail eggs. Other things, I photographed because they represent ubiquitous details of the place (and of Europe)—cast your eye about and eventually you’ll see them, here there everywhere: the lace curtains, the bistro chalkboard, the mottled stone.


My last picture of the day was the photo of Man Ray’s image—I’ve always loved it—of the woman’s back painted to resemble a cello. This poster was all over Lugano at the time, promoting an exhibit I wouldn’t have time to see. And so I borrow a master photographer’s work to conclude the story—a perfect punctuation mark at the end of this little tale of black and cream.


NOTE: I just read that the Man Ray exhibit is still on until the 16th of June, and that until May 17, you can participate on-line in the interactive “Man Ray Game” (MGR) by contributing to his “fictional biography.” Click here for more information or to play.

Posted in AROUND US, COLOR, OUT & ABOUT | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Hit the road, Jacques

Posted on May 10, 2011 by The Daily Cure

OK. I’m back in Italy, but yesterday a package I ordered a few days ago arrived from Amazon.fr: the French card game, Mille Bornes. The immediate effect of its arrival was that my memories zoomed back in time both one week and a few decades. My mother bought this game for my brother and me when we were young, and we used to play it while in the car—a surreal choice considering the card game is based on driving. (Kind of like being a house fly trapped in an airplane, but I digress.)


We loved the game, though in hindsight, I can’t really remember what was so exciting about it. It involves hazards (such as wrecks, flat tires, empty tanks), remedies, safeties and distances (expressed in kilometers, of course, in the French version). And it all moves toward the rather predictable objective of “who gets there first wins.” The road race is an imaginary 700 kilometers long, and the winner (the player who first arrives precisely at the finish line) has the option of extending the race to 1000 kilometers. Hmmm.

The game was invented in 1954 by Edmond Dujardin (original box above) and redesigned in 1960 by graphic designer Joseph Le Callennec. It is this design (also above) which you see on the cards today. In that same year, however, a special, limited edition (below) was designed that is more abstract and very beautiful. (We were born into well-designed times, were we not?)

All this and the desire to purchase a new set came to mind over Easter break when we were cruising around in our very own voiture in the region around Vézelay and the Parc du Morvan. We had just cruised through the picturesque town of Pierre-Perthuis and were continuing along Route 958, when this vista rose before us. Snap.


Studying the image when I got back, my eye fell not on the picture-postcard perfection of the view, but on the small milestone in the lower left hand corner. These mille bornes are all over the country roads and even along the sides of the canals in France. And often when I see them, I think of the card game I played with my brother so many years ago.

Thus the human brain works, going around in circles, connecting present day events to things in the past, bridging oceans and merging continents, muddying the 1970’s in Tennessee with a game invented in France in 1954—turning a rather innocuous and rather typical milestone on a French road into yet another personal marker that says, “Look where you are.” And in this game, the objective is not to finish, but just to keep driving and loving the trip.

Thank to the blog “Les Tasons” from which I borrowed the card game imagery and a fact or two.

Posted in FRANCE, MEMORIES OF | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Keeping time, beautifully

Posted on May 9, 2011 by The Daily Cure

Let it be said straight-away: I could not afford one of these watches (once manufactured for the Royal Italian Navy) but I think they are things of beauty. The name? Officine Panerai. The company is now headquartered in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, but I have nevertheless always considered this an Italian watch and loved it for that fact.

1860: “Giovanni Panerai (1825-1897), founder of the family business, opens the first watchmaker’s shop in Florence on the Ponte alle Grazie and establishes contact with the most prestigious and longest established Swiss watch manufacturers. Giovanni is succeeded by his son, Leon Francesco…” And so the story began.

Back when I was single and earning “real” money and thought of no one but myself (almost), I might have bought one, had I even known they existed. But now that I know them and find that their heavy metal tugs at my heart, they are far out of reach.

Fortunately for me, their website offers a screen saver to upload to the computer. So though I don’t have leather and bronze strapped around my wrist, I have the “Luminor Marina” face before me much of the day—a small gift from those who have to those who have not. If you click on the image below, you can have one too. (You’ll see “Download Screensaver,” with a choice of Mac or PC just to the right of the site’s footer menu.)

Posted in ITALY, WHAT WE WEAR | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Closed/Week in review

Posted on May 8, 2011 by The Daily Cure

Monday
“Transitions: Follow the yellow brick road”
In which we are greeted in France
with a great, yellow carpet.
(Read this.)

Tuesday, Part 1
“One potato”
In which we celebrate the uncommon goodness
of the common French, red potato.
(Read this.)

Tuesday, Part 2
“Self portrait: The passerby”
In which the blogger realizes that she is blending halfway
into backgrounds she never imagined seeing.
(Read this.)

Wednesday
“Let’s take the road less traveled by”
In which we take a walk
on a dirt road.
(Read this.)

Thursday
“Pissenlits/dandelions”
In which we think about World War II, a weed,
a recipe, and gratitude.
(Read this.)

Friday
“Spring storm”
In which we watch grey clouds
roll into town, and rejoice.
(Read this.)

Posted in WEEK IN REVIEW | Leave a comment