Roma: walking around

I am getting worried about the street picture project. I love taking street pictures, but now that it has been transformed in a homework I find it very hard! I did not yet came up some interesting themes. Roma of course offers many opportunities, but I feel that so many are borderline with cliché touristy pics… Everyone I meet seems to have a camera. So, how can I shoot something that is more than the witty tourist picture?

I walked along Via Cola di Rienzo, a shopping street. A street musician was playing at a corner. The music was bad, but his outfit great. He was placed in such a way that I could take pics of the people passing in front of him and of their reaction. I stayed a while, took pics with many people or with no one… I used the posts of traffic lights and road signals to fill in the frame, the electoral posters to see if the message could resonate in the picture.. ( “Do not change government. Change Italy” on one side, which is the poster of the new democratic party… and the symbol of “Forza nuova”, an old fascist party on another). Nothing really happened, apart from a grandpa dancing a bit with his little grand daughter in front of him. I missed the action as I was too far.

I walked to Piazza del Popolo, hoping that I could do something with this beautiful large space and the long shadows of sunset. I sat on the wall around it, looking at the tourist relaxing after a long day of walking. I used a 50mm from there, and tried to have some people/action in a corner of the frame but also use the Piazza in the composition, the less obvious parts of it: the walls, the fountains, the stones rather than the domes and the obelisk. I captured a dad feeding his baby with a bottle, shame that the baby face was never visible enough. A child on his bike. A fair share of graffiti, kissing couples, tourists sitting on the ground… but all in all nothing really special.

Back home. I am also catching up with the classes. I finally completed the one about Friedlander, Webb, Harvey and Parke. I did it in instalments, one photographer at the time… adding, for each, some time to look at their work on the internet. I really loved them all. I loved the way they used colours. I loved the visual riddles, the complexity of the frame. It is true, however, that these pictures sometimes "force" people to see, and in doing them they also point to a direction. I had found the pics of Frank bland, but now I also understand that they had a more sattle way to make think and reflect, not so much "in your face"... something that is more open ended rather than as a solution of a puzzle.
Unfortunately I found out that most of their books are sold out or incredibly expensive… It is so good that at least the magnum archive is on line! During the class I thought so many times “I wish I could do a pic like this”. When we will have to work in the style of some masters, well, they will be definitely be in my shortlist.