I’m just back from a vacation trip to Italy. It was just my wife and
myself, in part celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary coming up in
October. It was a chance to use some of the many, many frequent flyer
miles that I’ve accumulated in the last few years. I had the chance to
spend many hours in a somewhat concentrated fashion making photographs.
We had the opportunity to reconnect with a special place that we had not
seen in nearly 20 years: Riomaggiore, a village in Italy that has
provided the basis for many images that my wife has in her paintings. In
a way, I was there as her photographer, to document the visual so that
she would have new references for new paintings.
Riomaggiore is in Liguria, on the Mediteranean coast that is the
continuation of the French Riveria. In the west there is the developed
“Italian Riveria”, but as one moves east, past Genoa toward La Spezia,
the coast is less developed. Just before La Spezia lie five towns which
until after WWII were only approachable by boat. A rail line and then a
highway opened them up after the war, but they remained much as they
were. Known as the “Cinque Terre”, they have been a favorite of artists
and poets. At the sea, now cut off from the rest of the village by the
rail line is the small harbor.
