Annalia S.'s photos with the keyword: black and white

Happy Bench Monday, everybody! I will be gone all week, so thank you in advance for visits and comments. Will try to catch up when I get back.

Sant'Ambrogio square is on my route home from work and a coveted spot for street musicians (see www.ipernity.com/doc/2518356/50885646) . This time it was the turn of a trio singing/playing the typical Florentine "stornelli" - folk tunes featuring often humorous tales of the life of the common folk: love, betrayal, rotten luck, mischievous youngsters, nasty bosses, sassy women and not so holy clergymen. While not quite as popular as other groups, they did have an appreciative audience, who giggled and laughed out loud at some of the (sometimes heavy-handed) humor. The singer took a break to go get some cool water for himself and his partners, so he only appears in the PIP, where he's singing the woes of a husband coming home to find his wife closeted in the barn with the next-door farmer.

Happy Bench Monday, everyone!

The street musicians are back and these guys, with their jazzy rock, are among my favourites. Have a jazzy week ahead, everybody!

An installation by French artist JR on the façade of Palazzo Strozzi, representing the wound inflicted by the pandemic to cultural institutions. The b/w photographic collage visualises a rip in the physical structure of the building that reveals its interior, in part real (the colonnade of Palazzo Strozzi's courtyard), in part imagined (rooms hosting art exhibitions and libraries), creating an arresting contrast to the brown stone of the Palazzo. In the PIP: a glimpse of the actual interior courtyard seen past its b/w photographic counterpart. For more info: www.palazzostrozzi.org/en/archivio/exhibitions/jr

Happy Bench Monday, everybody! Have a nice week!

One of the ramps that lead to Florence's satellite villages from the path on the right bank of the Arno River. In the PIP: at the top of the ramp looking across the river to one of the villages on the left bank. Wishing everyone a sunny, pleasant HFF! Most of all, sending out to Andy Rodker light-filled thoughts and positive feelings to help him fight off the infection that is wearing him down.

For Andy. Light will break through, gently and little by little.

Does better on black, I think.

In the main image, gardens in bloom along the left bank of the Arno River. In the Pip, light at play among the plants in my garden.

Today Italy remembers its pandemic victims. The date was not chosen at random: on this day, a year ago, a convoy of army trucks filled with caskets took away the bodies of those who had lost their lives to Covid from Bergamo because its morgue could no longer handle them. (A photo of the convoy moving through Bergamo's empty streets is published here: tg24.sky.it/politica/2021/03/18/draghi-bergamo-giornata-nazionale-vittime-covid ) A reminder of how the virus caught us unprepared and overwhelmed us. Until recently, Italy was one of the countries with the highest life expectancy in the world. Perhaps a combination of diet, life style, genes, I don't know, but it was not uncommon any more for people, women especially, to live into their 90s. My own mother was a few months short of 93 when she passed away, her second sister reached the age of 92 and the youngest sister just turned 90 this year. Until the pandemic struck she was still an active woman, drove her car (in Naples' hectic traffic, mind you!) went to fetch her grandchildren from school and donated her work to a charitable institution for disabled children. Now, of course, she's confined at home, hoping the vaccine will come and allow her a bit more freedom of movement. My aunt is one of the lucky ones, though. Today we mourn all the ones, young and old, that the pandemic took from us: not only the 103,432 who died from confirmed covid, but also those who were not tested, those who did not receive proper care because the hospitals were/are overwhelmed, and those who could not overcome the sadness, the loneliness, the loss of their livelihood. Today is for mourning, Tomorrow we must try and do better at protecting ourselves and those around us. This thing will not be over until it's over for everyone.

Just a few leaves still hanging on, before Winter really got down to business. I liked the morning light playing amongst them.

In an old house that has seen very little remodelling. While most of the window panes have been replaced overtime, a few are still the old "drawn glass" panes. This shot of the building in front of one window shows the deformations produced by the old glass pane (on the right) vs the deformation-free modern glass pane on the left. I liked how the deformations gave this very commonplace building almost a Gaudi-like air :)))

A black and white kitty was the only presence in the courtyard of this agriturismo a short bike ride from Florence. Agriturismos are a sort of combination guesthouse-farm. By law, a high percentage of the food they serve must be of their own production. This one had a thriving vegetable garden just across the country lane I was travelling on and a very pleasant (if nearly deserted in the mid afternoon) courtyard next to beautiful olive groves and an orchard. In the pip: a glimpse of a shady corner of the inner court, with a collection of old farm implements. HFF again, from the Tuscan countryside!

Relic of a distant rural past, this old "cascina" has seen little maintenance over the years and creates a sharp contrast with the relatively newer and taller buildings that rose up all around it as the city expanded and took over areas that were once mostly fields. I like its defiant "resistance". I was intrigued by the set of 5 old ceramic insulators still attached to the wall. I had not seen one of those in a long time! HFF to all who are "resisting" in these tough times, with a special thought to fellow Ipernians in the USA, South America and South East Asia who are experiencing high surges of infection.

The afternoon sun, filtering through the canopy of one of our trees, paints fantastic shapes on our wall. I saw a bouquet of flowers in the shadowy shapes, but I like Judite's "reading" of the image as a flight of swallows (see her comment below) far better! I would love it if people told me what they "see" here - and don't worry, it's not a Rorschach's test :))) Title by J. Garcia

At the close of a sunny afternoon, just ahead of her family group, a child rides her bike on a country lane while a beam of sunlight singles her out.