Always Trippin’

Siena and San Gimignano, where there lives the cutest donkey in existence with his perpetual sticking-tongue-out-post-consuming-orange habit (watch out, he will chew your jacket with much gusto though!), where there is a Martini on the rocks and a non-existent Barna from Siena, a shell-shaped Piazza that slopes into a sewer, and towers of medieval fashion that stand in a over-medievalized medieval town (they destroyed all the Renaissance and later architecture to create an idealized medieval gem of an Italian town…yay San Gimignano). Like every other city, they claim to have the best gelato in Tuscany and thus probably Italy, but watch out - it’s not open in the winter.

Bologna, where there are two leaning towers that aren’t as famous as a certain other un-straight tower, a (definitely) abundantly-breasted fountain that spews forth merrily, exquisite food - unfortunately I didn’t sample the bologna, delightful dogs of various shapes and sizes, and a massive market that sells shoes cheap enough to make me cry. Who wouldn’t want a pair of red snake-skin chunky-heeled boots for five Euros? A shame they didn’t have my size.

I spent an entire weekend in Florence for the first time since I arrived here, and meandered around the photo museum and questioned my purposes as a photographer. Snapped black-and-whites in the overcast Boboli Gardens, walking beneath the menacing fingered trees that seemed like they could reach down to grab me at any moment. Am I really a photographer - what does that mean, and what am I trying to say? How do I put my presence into these photos? What of the people I am picturing, what stories do I tell of their lives, can I speak from the individual to the individual? Does this change the way I see my world, and could it possibly change the lives of any other person? I don’t know. I struggle. Not knowing how to be different, fumbling with my filters, my lenses, not falling into another generic shot but seeking something real, raw, beautiful, fresh and new. I am awkward, still not willing to throw myself out there and do what it takes to make the photo happen. For all the hiding behind a lens, in a way you make yourself more vulnerable by your conspicuousness, the way people react to you differently, the way people change their behavior around you.