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font angel
I love church statues. And if the statue is an angel, swooping down with a shell-shaped font? You know I’ll love that even more than a normal statue.
And then, when I get home, I have the pleasure of editing the image.
What a life!
Chiesa de San Giuseppe dei Padri Teatini
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 8.31.2022
mixed use street
We’d found this market during one of our daytime meanderings. It was bustling, full of activities like the one guy who was cleaning the night’s catch of sardines or the other guy who’d set up a kitchen beside an arcade and was frying up plates of fish or the people using the public fountain to wash dishes or the people enjoying lunch.
But then we heard the place takes on a whole new feel after dark – it was described to us “as like a disco” – so of course, on our last night in Palermo, we had to go see. It was different. It was a lot different. The fish cleaners and fish fryers were gone. No one was doing the dishes. And of course it was too late for lunch. But there were even more people than we’d seen in the daytime. There was a little place selling aperol spritzes. There were tiny cafes all over the place. There were diners. There were pedestrians. (There were four American photographers.) There were motorbikes threading their way through it all.
It was hard to leave.
La Vucciria Market
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 8.31.2022
number 88 and a wall-heart
So many things going on in just one frame…I’ll just stop writing now and let your eyes wander around.
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 8.30.2022
the modest maiden
One thing about aimless wandering through an unfamiliar city is that the history of the places you’ll wander past isn’t something you’re necessarily aware of.
Here’s an example – we found this fountain because we turned down a dark passageway and there it was.
I liked the modest maiden, so I made her photograph.
When I sat down to write this post, I looked up the location on a map and discovered it’s the Fontana Pretoria. Further research led me to this fascinating bit of knowledge: The fountain was originally built in 1544 in Florence, but was sold, transferred, and reassembled* in Palermo in 1574. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the fountain was considered to depict the corrupt municipality of Palermo. For this reason – and because of the nude statues, it became known as Piazza della Vergogna (or Square of Shame). In 1998 a five-year restoration project began.
So anyway, that maiden’s been modest now for nearly 480 years.
Fontana Pretoria
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 8.29.2022
*Mostly. Some parts of it went missing.
tambourine man
If you were here yesterday, you saw the photo of the Sicilian folk dancer that was part of the group we photographed in Palermo.
And this guy was one of the musicians, playing his tambourine (or, in Sicily, his tamburello).
The musicians treated us (and random passersby) to a nice selection of music while we got in their way and (sometimes) in each other’s as we attempted to capture the magic that was a concert + dancer along the harbor.
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 9.3.2022
One Day | One Image 