The weather is hot and sunny and the food portions are too big.
People are relaxed, quiet and bear that sort of I-don’t-really-care-about-my-clothes-because-my-life-is-great elegance that kind of makes me hate them out of jealousy.
Technically, it should be Thursday, but it’s a throwback and that’s what matters.
While working on a street style project about Lisbon for my graphics class, I realized there weren’t many photos online that I could use. There is one very good blog, nicknamed ‘the portuguese Sartorialist’, and aptly titled O Alfaiate Lisboeta. Other than that, all I managed to do was dig into Yvan Rodic’s pictures of past Lisbon Fashion Weeks and I was left with a rather large amount of photos, but from limited sources.
Then I thought about my days back in Lisbon, when I was still studying Industrial Design at the de-facto Art University of the capital. I’ve always been very keen on analog photography but back then I was addicted. I finished up to two rolls per week and had them developed near my school. My flickr was constantly being updated with new pictures of everywhere I went, everyone I met, in black and white or colour, with or without grain, cross-processed or natural, redscale film or low ISO… I had to get a paid account because I had no room for my photographs anymore, and every once in a while I took a CD to the print shop and had them printed traditionally, on 10×15 matte paper.
I photographed everything from places, to moments, to details. I loved it. In a time when I was quite miserable and lost, film photography kept me going, kept me inspired and distracted and kept me focused on the world around me instead of on my own lack of direction. So when I found myself lacking resources – and as you often do in situations of creative work panic – I thought of the last photographic source of material I could have possibly thought of using.
My own.
Because, sometimes, pictures do speak a thousand words, and I have a soft spot for people on bicycles.
I am still looking through the pictures of Verona. I’ve already selected around 70, but resizing them will take a while so I decided to make a separate post for the small town that I visited on my last day – Garda, on the shore of its namesake lake.
It’s a peaceful, quiet village nestled between the mountains, where swans waddle around the shore of the lake and people hide from the rain under the awnings of Summer-themed souvenir shops. The air is pure and has a strong scent of wet earth and cypress trees.
I wasn’t supposed to visit Garda – I had three days in Verona and a 1h30m bus ride wasn’t on my schedule. I had barely enough time to cover the monuments. But on my last day I found myself with a dilemma – do I go visit the Arena, something similar to 20 other Roman theatres and amphiteatres I’ve seen in my lifetime, or do I hop on the first bus to the lake, have half an hour for pictures and hop on the bus back just in time for my train to Rome?
As you would guess, the reckless, sudden, unplanned option won. And this might actually have been the best part of my trip.
