april 2017
43°46′17″N 11°15′15″E
i experienced a surge of creativity around 2017. the circumstances were just right: as a result of my masters course, i was feeling confident in my ability to take interesting pictures and i was slowly starting to discover my appetite for doing it “more seriously.” there was a catch, however - while internally that would have been a great time for photography, i could not say the same about the external circumstances. i’d overestimated my capacity to stay on top of a masters course while trying to tailor a job out of a hobby. too green to figure out when to stop or how to handle whatever was left of my life outside of work and studies, i’d reached a point where the quality of my sleep had fallen off a cliff.
too tired to sleep and too sleepy to act normally, i spent a few of my nights in Florence working on assignments for my course. surprisingly enough, i still functioned reasonably well, though reality had become a little fragmented. in such a state, hobbies and passions quickly become purely mechanical, things one has to do just for the sake of doing them or perhaps for the potential of deriving pleasure from them post factum.
in the name of introspection or just self indulgence, i’ve always insisted on explaining my relationship with photography to myself. to cut a long story short, i take photos to reinterpret or document my life. certainly, i still create memories and remember significant moments, although the things i do not have been replaced by memories i have manufactured. more than a year after the trip to Florence i would walk the streets of London and would try to explore whatever photography meant to me. nothing too profound here: thinking about the shots i am not taking for a specific, well articulated purpose, i guess my entire philosophy boils down to a single question: “how would i like to remember a particular entity or moment?”
i can’t remember much of my trip to Florence, but the photos i have selected are meant to fill in the (large) gaps. most, if not all of these were taken on autopilot. flicking through the set reveals platitude characteristic of an average tourist’s photos, yet the ones i’ve selected would be those i wish to use as the building blocks of a memory.
april 2017
43°46′17″N 11°15′15″E
i experienced a surge of creativity around 2017. the circumstances were just right: as a result of my masters course, i was feeling confident in my ability to take interesting pictures and i was slowly starting to discover my appetite for doing it “more seriously.” there was a catch, however - while internally that would have been a great time for photography, i could not say the same about the external circumstances. i’d overestimated my capacity to stay on top of a masters course while trying to tailor a job out of a hobby. too green to figure out when to stop or how to handle whatever was left of my life outside of work and studies, i’d reached a point where the quality of my sleep had fallen off a cliff.
too tired to sleep and too sleepy to act normally, i spent a few of my nights in Florence working on assignments for my course. surprisingly enough, i still functioned reasonably well, though reality had become a little fragmented. in such a state, hobbies and passions quickly become purely mechanical, things one has to do just for the sake of doing them or perhaps for the potential of deriving pleasure from them post factum.
in the name of introspection or just self indulgence, i’ve always insisted on explaining my relationship with photography to myself. to cut a long story short, i take photos to reinterpret or document my life. certainly, i still create memories and remember significant moments, although the things i do not have been replaced by memories i have manufactured. more than a year after the trip to Florence i would walk the streets of London and would try to explore whatever photography meant to me. nothing too profound here: thinking about the shots i am not taking for a specific, well articulated purpose, i guess my entire philosophy boils down to a single question: “how would i like to remember a particular entity or moment?”
i can’t remember much of my trip to Florence, but the photos i have selected are meant to fill in the (large) gaps. most, if not all of these were taken on autopilot. flicking through the set reveals platitude characteristic to an average tourist’s photos, yet the ones i’ve selected would be those i wish to use as the building blocks of a memory.
