Italy and England

Image | December 31, 2014June 6, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

There’s old Winston Churchill watching Big Ben, in Westminster, London, in March 2014.

An anglophile’s dream: the omnipresent iconic red telephone box.

Wandering around Portobello Road, in the Notting Hill neighborhood.

The street art / grafitti is like The Sex Pistols and the Bbc all rolled into one.

Tea at Sherlock Holmes and Watson’s house was quite amusing.

Enjoyed searching for british china tea cups and white darjeeling on a half deserted faire.

After wandering the many lovely garden parks of london wound up at Buckingham’s Gate.

Making the pilgrimage to John Keats house at Hampstead Heath, London, after years of visiting the flat he died in, and laying flowers at his grave, in Rome.

A room with a view…over the Thames, I was always excited to wake up to (and to raise my glass to) Big Ben.

Saw the beautiful La Boheme set in 1940s Paris at the Royal Albert Hall.

From the window of “221 b Baker Street, London

From the beautiful garden of John Keats home, where he fell in love with Fanny Brawne and wrote some of his greatest poems.

From the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. I do love a cloister.

You have no idea how deep my anglophilia goes because I am always going on about Italy but these signs gave me a profound joy.

This sign is so British it hurts.

One of those moments in London an American or most foreigners savor.

Always, a pilgrimage, a beauty, a joy. John Keats forever. English Romanticism forever.

Down the cloistered hall… like a dream of English classics, literary characters dancing in my head, London, a city looming in my brain of larger than life characters and eccentric, wonderful stories and frightful tales.

The heartbreakingly beautiful dream of Italy view from my dreamy Sorrento hotel room terrazzo.

Walking along the Appian Way on a quiet, car-free Sunday in Rome or along the Renaissance Via Guilia, I am forever excited and in awe over the small beauties and signs of the ancient world in this magical, mysterious city open-armed to the world.

The architecture and cafes are familiar but I feel and live Rome anew each visit. There’s always something new to discover or a passion to stumble onto. Life is in the moment. It is heavy with the past, it is so alive it smacks of the future, but it is so wildly, lightly felt in the now, in the moment, Rome is like dreaming awake, feeling everything. Everything!

Finding new off the beaten path cafes was a big favorite of mine in Italy this year. Always in search of the quiet moments and the hidden corners of Rome. This cafe was in Trastevere where you can sit and sip espresso and gaze at a Baroque Madonna painted onto a church exterior wall.

I love the Eternal City because it has so many layers of history and love and unknown stories and marks of time and beauty in decay and new life bursting forth in a macabre, colored, brilliant celebration in Roman life today.

Took a boat around my favorite island and swam in the Tyrrhenian sea on Capri, a place which invokes everything beautiful, lush and ancient about Southern Italy. There’s nothing quite like it.

Returned to a lot of the same pleasures of the past, freshly squeezed oranges and lemons, under the Italian sun, by a Neapolitan woman who sings all day as she flitters around her Kiosk on the gorgeous Via Tragara.

A return to Pompeii, the fascinating buried city with Vesuvius watchful in the distance.

Meeting new friends abroad 🙂

Long walks soaking in the sun and the past.

Architectural details in half-obscured gardens of small villa art museums (full of amazing Renaissance, ancient and baroque Italian art)!

Being the foreigner in a city you fall into like a comfortable affair.

The moments you can’t anticipate but happen upon in the most beautiful of happenstances.

My favorite spot on earth for the golden hour, on the Pincian Hill in Rome. This is before the view of the Popolo.

A typical Roman street, wrapped into the mystery of fragments and pieces of history.

The beauty of being overwhelmed in Rome.

Cafe life in Italy, a class of wine or a coffee, a little treat, there is nothing like it. Another layered moment captured, to be savored and remembered palpably.

On every wall there is a reminder of death and a reminder of love, the eternal kind, of love that lasts, and of life in the hand too.

Rome, a city to return to, one that keeps its shutters open to the world, long enough for an unforgettable peek.

Since that first moment I arrived there, now, and always, for Roma.

For traveling, for seeing the world, for meeting new people, and for being at home in the world.

Here’s to 2014… and here is a cheers to 2015 and a new year of adventure and experience and chasing beauty!

A monastery in the clouds

November 15, 2013June 7, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

One fall afternoon in Naples the clouds snuck out from behind the Pantheon-like San Francesco di Paola Church as I stood in the main square in the sunshine.

Approaching the large, Bourbon Piazza del Plebiscito from the Santa Lucia waterfront district is one of the most dramatic views I’ve ever seen in a city. There is an old monastery on an ancient hill and from this vantage point it looks like the Certosa di San Martino is floating on clouds.

A closer look as you come upon the piazza.

Caffe Gambrinus (Oscar Wilde’s old haunt and one of my favorite cafe-bar-tearooms) and the gleaming dome of the Galleria Umberto I, a strikingly beautiful marble-covered shopping atrium.

All photographs shot in Naples, Italy October 2013 and were shot on velvia 35mm film slides by Rebecca Price Butler alovelettertorome.com retrofocus@mac.com

heart-stealing baroque napoli

Image | October 21, 2013June 7, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

The old Greek section of Napoli, Italy is a recurring fascination of mine.

A closed boulangerie with a broom leaning against the store front. Painted pastoral scenes on plates. Rusted piping and peeling posters. Grafitti in bright colors.

Caffe chairs sprinkled throughout the back streets of Spaccanapoli.

The sun finds it way though the velvet black shadows. Posters advertise operas I won’t get to see. Padre Pio forever in the background, his face found in taxi cabs, on walls, in churches, in caffes.

Hanging bronze dyed pasta, bufalo mozzarella from campania, rows of inviting rum-soaked baba cakes filled with rummy yellow cream, tiny wild strawberries, Sfogliatelle.

Two “lovers” embracing in front of an iconic “second hand shop” full of Neapolitan treasures overseen by a curious little dog.

The simple cafe tables and chairs in front of artisan shops and caffes with a sculpture of an old man in the background.

Every day life in an alleyway; people, a truck delivering goods, empty vegetable and fruit crates, the golden mustard apartments and hanging laundry.

A baroque awning, layers of brick from different centuries, buildings and façades built on top of each other, a neapolitan girl on her mobile, another caffe beckoning the passersby.

Hanging fruit and ripe red campania tomatoes and an early pasieggetta.

I love the corners and crevices and surprising bursts of yellow in between the rust.

Ancient pillars in residential neighborhoods, forming millennia old foundations.

Another beautiful church front and a charming caffe.

The quintessential graffiti of Naples, as ancient as the tags and scribblings on Pompeiian walls.

The old guard and the ‘new art’.

Bursts of color and brightness and the scent of glorious coffee floating in the air at every turn.

More graffiti, and the vespas and cars and Neapolitans seem all the more nonchalant about it.

I always seem to find the caffes… I always feel like I’m on some unspoken mission to drink the best coffee.

A whole street filled with beautiful second hand and rare book shops and musical instruments and conservatories. I never wanted to leave.

When the little girl walked by I knew I had to capture her in that moment of contrasts and colors.

A gorgeously appointed restaurant, intimate, and romantic in a baroque neapolitan way. I could have lingered for hours with a glass of nero d’avola and flirted but I had less than a day to shoot Naples because of all the rain prior to this day.

This is a wider shot of the restaurant. It looks like an opening to another, older world. I told you it was beautiful.

Stunning churches, colorful architecture, dark and ancient looking alleyways filled with street theatre and trash on the street… the extremes of modern Napoli.

There is so much to see, just to read on the walls.

I like when the grafitti becomes art.

Even the scribbles are a crying out and bleed every color onto wood and stone and brick.

Back to this fellow. I remember his likeness on other walls on other visits to Naples.

The priest or monk, grafitti iconography and protest.

I found this hollowed out frame and the lettering (name of the one time King) very delicate and beautiful looking.

Mirrors and antiques and the scrawlings every where.

A delightful music shop.

I know Napoli isn’t for everyone. I know street grafitti on historical buildings can be a bit of a shock. But once you visit Naples a few times and fall into the rhythm of the city and of its people, the fright wears off and you begin to see the color is all the more bright in contrast to the shadows. If you are like me and find beauty in decaying things and centuries of history piled up on top of each other, you may just find yourself falling in love with the heart stealer of baroque Napoli.

All photographs shot on portra 400 and 800 – 35mm film.

I’ve returned back to the United States from Italy

Image | October 18, 2013June 7, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

Notes on a little about my photographic process. I’ve been asked about this and it’s mostly the use of fine art films and my analog camera, but it’s also my digital camera and my iPhone too, that I shoot images with.

vintage sky blue vespa in napoli, italy, portra 800, october 2013

Yesterday I picked up my 35mm film photographs of Capri, Ana Capri, Sorrento and Napoli – shot in portra 160, 400 and 800, kodak pro h, and a few spare vintage-style rolls of color film, the names of which escape me at the moment. I shot some velvia slide film, which was developed into individual slides and I poured through each slide on a light table with a magnifying glass and chose the best ones (and the lab will scan them onto cd so I can post them here and in some articles and guides on Italy for other publications – AND which cost me $5 per slide)!!!

A roll of art film can be $15-$75 just for 35 mm film… 120 film (medium format/ large format) can be even more. Some times one can luck out with a five pack for $55, depending on the film. The film slide film is usally $25+ per roll and there is some incredibly beautiful discontinued slide film is now $75-$125 per roll with an expiration date! My fridge doors are not packed with cheese or juice or butter but with endless rolls of film, the cheap stuff, the mid range and the criminally expensive. It’s vitally important to buy your film from credible sources. That’s why I tend to buy the film in person, from a few credible photography shops in the Boston area, who properly store their unexpired film in a film fridge.

So for this trip, the 11th to Italy (ahh, makes me think of Doctor Who!) – I spent a couple hundred dollars on the film, a couple hundred to develop the rolls and a few hundred more once they scan the velvia film slides onto CD.

I shot about a hundred pictures on digital but focused mainly on analog because I prefer the dreamlike, tonal quality and the color and beauty of these special films. It’s sad how incredibly costly it is to shoot with fine art film; it’s truly a dying art form. But there is still the drugstore deals on fujifilm and kodak (buy one 5 pack, get one free, etc) I collect in bulk because that film is great for every day shots and practice. But for Italy and for shoots where I’m looking to tell a story, I still rely on those rare gems: portra, velvia, etc.

neapolitans in spaccanapoli, portra 800, october 2013

As I return to writing and shooting and editing I’m thinking of arranging this into a book or extended project of my version of Off The Beaten Path Italy so I’m thinking of the tremendous cost as an investment. We’ll see.

I have a busy weekend but I’m going to get some pieces together soon and post some of the photographs here. I do post some of the stand alone shots on tumblr here.

if you find yourself in naples…

Image | July 16, 2013June 7, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

When you go to Naples, go to the top of a beautiful hill and enter the serene parco Capidimonte and stroll through large hedgerow pathways. You’ll find a glorious fountain covered in thick hanging moss and mariner figures. There is a lovely view of the hills of Naples nearby. The fountain is decaying, partly buried under the thick growth of moss and greenery. I couldn’t possibly love it more. After you wander around and linger on the grounds, go into the museum. See wonderful pantings and sculpture. Go to the second floor for the three Artemisia Gentileschis currently available for public viewing. Dream of returning before you’ve even left. Fall in love with beauty all over again.

Charles III of Bourbon era fountain detail, Capidimonte Park, Napoli, Italy, autumn 2012 (digital)

spaccanapoli – off the beaten path naples

Image | May 20, 2013June 7, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

It’s “that” street they always tell you about if you find yourself in Naples.

For people watching, craft shopping, cafe hopping and snapshot taking, you can’t pick a more fascinating and colorful place than the Old Greek section of Naples.

Another half hidden gem in a Neapolitan alleyway.

I wonder what this one means, what it is for and how old it is? Also I love graffiti that states the obvious.

Interesting graffiti.

This guy was hiding in the most unlikely corners around the neighborhood.

Commentary on the papal conclave me thinks.

This is certainly one of my favorites.

Gorilla boy is back.

Naples, where the vespas and motor bikes look even cooler when parked against peeling grafittied walls.

Just your normal everyday missing chunks of a rather old building. This sign means nothing, paint it.

Hiding behind corners gets surprise shots and weird angles.

Off the beaten path Napoli.

The inside of a building half torn down.

Open shuttered windows and laundry hung about everywhere. Modern life layered onto to history.

A church at the end of another road. More graffiti and more arches to walk under.

Naple’s newer creatures.

The side entrance, dramatic to me, no big deal to the locals.

I’m trying to decide if this is rude or not.

Can a city qualify as cool on one incredible nonchalant chatting spot? It should.

I just follow the crowds to avoid them.

I followed the sound of New Orleans jazz music and found this delightful bunch.

The layers, the layers, the layers… I go on and on about it but Napoli is a city of layers!

Gentile.

It’s the forbidden peeks into private gardens and courtyards I love best.

The spooky Purgatory Lane.

Vico del fico al purgatorio. An abandoned dusty baby’s pram that wasn’t there in October at the entrance of the dark and musty Purgatory Lane. Nope, not at all like a horror movie.

All photographs are 35mm film, Pro H and Kodak, copyright Rebecca Price Butler, of alovelettertorome.com

naples’ children

Image | April 3, 2013April 4, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

It’s simply impossible for me to tire of the dark, craggy, cramped, decaying alleyways of Napoli. Because I find them so beautiful. What is that expression? Life in the streets. But that’s not subtle enough. That has no emotion. No color. No fragrance. I’m just an American who falls in love with corners of places. Pages in books. The picture I see in everything. What do I know about it? Not much. But I love it all the same.

Napoli gang of 11-13 year old boys smoking on the beach for the first time after they robbed a sweets cart.

The unofficial leader of the gang, a tall blond boy, teaches the other boys how to smoke after they bummed cigarettes off kissing teenagers and robbed a food cart and cafe of crisps and chocolates.

Boys playing football in the corner of a small piazza.

photographs copyright Rebecca Price Butler

his direct gaze

Image | March 22, 2013April 3, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

I had one shot. I couldn’t blow it. I wanted to hide and be invisible and take his portrait across the piazza. I had one frame. And then it would be lost, the moment, the intensity of feeling, his direct gaze before self awareness gets the best of him. He gave me more than I could have hoped for, my Neapolitan. My soldier. I cannot hide from his direct gaze.

naples scenes in a few steps

Image | March 11, 2013March 22, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

I love walking down the little market walk ways under Renaissance awnings. There’s nothing on earth quite like the streets of Naples. I’ve heard it said certain spots in Napoli hearken back to the ancient world, only a few other spots in the world like Calcutta can recall another time so long ago.

In the connecting pedestrian streets of the picaresque Spaccanapoli, Naples boasts one charming cafe after cafe another. I love the coffee of Napoli; the rich, strong demitasses of espressos, the sweet nuttiness of a nocciola (espresso, sugar and ground roasted hazelnuts), or a frothy and properly hot cappuccino.

The children of Naples play in the grotty, wonderful streets against the backdrop of statues, paintings and colored walls peeling for centuries. In between the tiny fiats and citroens and three to a vespa. They find their games anywhere and everywhere, cheerfully kicking their “footballs” under the feet of passersby, in front of store windows, around fountains and niches of ruins. There is such a sense of play underneath it all.

From the moment I first walked these streets a few years ago I became enchanted with the market trinkets hanging from stalls, the smell of cheese and bread, tomatoes and fish wafting out of trattorias. I loved the cobblestones, the gorgeous archways, the warm colors. I am enchanted with the best people watching in Italy.

Old world art, architecture and pop culture kitsch mix in any given corner of the historic center of Napoli. There before me is amazing street art graffiti, a sticker of a carefree Einstein placed prominently over a cafe and a quiet tea shop tucked up in the most unlikely of places. There is an empty neighborhood chair left leaning against a wall amid an array of inexplicable traffic signs – there’s even a post-modern Madonna under the auspices of a revolver.

Near to the beautiful garden Cloisters of Santa Chiara, is a street art Eve with Eden’s snake, underneath an old Campania tree. The hand painted Spanish tile, fountains and arched windows of the cloisters are a near silent oasis in the heart of the city. Lemon and orange trees and flowers line the green, manicured gardens of the inner courtyard. It is a private, clean and calm spot to pop in for a little bit, for a lovely walk or a sit on a bench with a book or a friend.

//photographs copyright rebecca price butler …find my work on tumblr & pinterest … please link & credit me.