the american who hated photography

notes from 2010

When I was 16, I stayed for a few weeks in the house of an older painter in Northern Italy.  It was late July.

At the time, I found photography to be something that was important. I don’t remember why.  Perhaps because I loved NYLON magazine or perhaps because my sister was in her first year at a college in Upstate New York where photography was deemed very important.

I was in the kitchen one afternoon when I overheard the painter talking to an American man my mom didn’t like.  My mom didn’t like hearing American accents in Europe. It felt unnatural to her. Like she should get her money back or something.

American man was saying how he saw no skill or talent in photography. His gardener, yeah you heard him, his GARDENER, could take a photo of a sunset, and it would be as beautiful as any of the photography you saw in the museums. Where was the talent?

I could hear my mom getting involved. Oh, she was seeing a way in to this conversation. “Well,” she began… and then she asked the painter for his opinion. “What do you think?” We had three of the painter’s paintings back at our house.

Did he agree?  Did he think that painting was even comparable to photography?

This is when the painter’s wife got involved.

“Oh come on, you don’t think like that,” she said to her husband, the painter. She put a bowl of lentils down next to a smaller bowl of cut tomatoes. “Photography is a totally different medium - you cannot even compare!!”

She poured five glasses of red wine, the fifth mixed with water for their 10 year-old daughter.

But really, the American asked the painter, ignoring the woman at the head of table. Come on… what do you really think..

The painter finally put his fork down, looking from his wife, back to the American.

“I mean, come on it’s,” he sighed. “Painting.. it, it does.. “ he sighed again. “I don’t, you just… you can’t. Different.”

He stood up then and walked right back to his studio. Where it was 100 degrees, and he would paint for the rest of the day.

And we stayed, and we ate lunch, and listened to his wife.

Who I loved to listen to, because she had truly lived.

-

Ten years later, I saw the painter again in a warehouse off Brick Lane. We were there for final show of his only daughter’s Photography degree.

She graduated with High Honors.

And all of her photos were of her mother.

love, Sophia