Susan Sanders graces us with another Friday Photo – this one a portrait of one of Rome’s roving boy bands taken on Via del Corso. For more photographs by Susan, visit her photo blog, Rome With A View.
Archive for August, 2007
30
Aug
Basta Pasta!
Italy’s association of consumers has announced that they’ve had it with the rising cost of pasta. In grocery stores, dried pasta prices are some 25% higher than in the past year, an increase that provoked the planning of a “sciopero della pasta” or pasta strike.
Thus, on Thursday September 13th, pizza will be in and pasta will be out as Italians just say no to spaghetti, fusilli, fettuccini, and the myriad of other pasta shapes that line the supermarket shelves.
Going for 24-hours without pasta will be difficult for many, so volunteers from consumer groups will be handing out free bread and milk in piazzas throughout the country – including Piazza Montecitorio and Piazza Verdi in Rome.
Though pasta is taking the hit on September 13th, it’s not just pasta prices that are squeezing Italian budgets, however. Consumer groups are also upset about hikes in the prices of electricity, gas, railway tickets, bread, milk, olive oil, school books, benzine, bank services, and insurance.
(Image notes: spaghetti models shown above appeared in a Moschino window in Rome in 2000. photo by Susan Sanders)
30
Aug
The Invicta Mini Sac
In Rome in the 1980s, you were nobody if you didn’t have a striped Invicta minisac. Now they’re back – a cult object with cross-generational appeal. As school starts this year, look for the Eternal City’s streets to be filled with brightly colored striped backpacks like these as they’re being advertised everywhere, from Vanity Fair to Cosmo and from Glamour to Rolling Stone.
29
Aug
Bigger is Better
On Via di Torre Argentina – one of the two routes that you might take to get from Largo Argentina to the Pantheon – there’s a fabulous little salumeria that’s managed to survive the dramatic growth in tourism that’s been the death of many other small businesses in the city center.
Their window changes with the seasons: in the fall it’s often graced by a huge pumpkin and packages of pumpkin ravioli (mmmm!). Now, in the last days of summer, it’s chock-full of chunks of Parmigiano and some of the biggest jars of pesto we’ve ever seen. In fact, these jars of pesto are even bigger than any about which we’ve ever dreamed.
How big are they, you ask? There’s a whopping 1450 grams of pesto in those jars: that’s about 50 ounces or 6 and 1/3 cups or 101 tablespoons! So, if you’re looking for the perfect gift or souvenir – something that will keep on giving long after the present’s been unwrapped – we’d advise you to invest a mere 39 euro in one of these jars of scintillating basil paste. In the meantime, we’ll start boiling some water for the pasta…
29
Aug
The Big Cover-Up
Clever, clever ad campaign from Intrecci Salon in Milan at Via Larga, 2. The copy reads, “Vanity Never Stops” and the images are of “nuns” whose elaborately shaped veils hint at exotic hairstyles beneath the drapery.
Agency: 1861 United, Milan, Italy
Creative Directors: Roberto Battaglia, Pino Rozzi
Art Directors: Federico Pepe, Micol Talso
Copywriters: Stefania Siani, Luca Beato
Discovered on the I Believe in Advertising website.
28
Aug
Career Options
According to the New York Times, Rome’s Cavalieri Hilton Hotel now offers gladiator lessons in conjunction with the Rome Historical Society. The article says:
Participants don full gladiator garb, including tunic, belt and sandals, then start learning combat moves with a rudis, or wooden training sword
The New York Time article is one of several recent notices about learning to be a gladiator while visiting Rome, including this article from the Australian and this article from Tandem.
If you live in Rome, you may want to consider joining the Gruppo Storico Romano (the organization that offers gladiatorial training), as membership has its advantages. Besides finessing your fighting skills, participation in the Gruppo Storico will allow you to train as a Roman soldier, to perform the rituals of the Vestal Virgins, or to compete for the chance to appear in the guise of the Goddess Roma for a year. And once you’ve mastered those ancient skills, you’ll be able to participate in some of Rome’s show-stopping events like the annual Birthday of Rome celebration and the Madonna Fiumarola procession.
28
Aug
Pimp My Primp
Ever have one of those mornings when you wake up feeling Goth? If so, you’ll want to hire Piergiorgio Robino, chief designer at Torino’s Nucleo, to trick out at least one bathroom in your home. Prefer a Baroque-Byzantine style with touches of Hollywood flair? Nucleo’s got that on offer as well.
Meant to fulfill your every bathroom dream, the ultra-luxe atmosphere of Nucleo’s bathrooms is achieved by means of gold and white tecnoril sinks, gold and stainless silver faucets, stainless steel and glass mirrors, and laser-impressed tecnoril furniture.
The Dreams bathroom series is produced by Cima Arredobagno, but that’s not all that Nucleo does. In recent years the firm has designed a gorgeous line of chocolates, Preciouss, as well as innovative jewelery.
For years, Italian photographer Massimo Vitali has been taking large format photos of the relaxation rituals that punctuate our lives. A native of Como, Vitali presently lives in Tuscany. He was born in 1944 and studied photography at the London College of Printing. A 1960s meeting with Simon Guttmann, the founder of the Report agency, prompted him to begin a career in photo journalism for Italian and European magazines. In the 1980s he worked as a filmmaker for television and cinema, and from the mid 1990s onwards, Vitali turned his attention to photography as a means for artistic research, shaping it into an original tool for portraying the world.
Many of Vitali’s photos show vacation destinations, applying a topographical clarity and a wealth of detail to the rites and rituals of modern leisure. His particular technique allows him to combine the minute detail of view-camera photography with a fascination for the fickle world of appearances, for his large-scale color images are shot from from a 12-to-15-foot platform.
Vitali says of both his process and his philosophy of photography:
The images must have a magical dimension in which perhaps sociology intermingles with play, and which have a story to tell. In the final analysis, I am happy when the ways of interpreting my pictures are complex and sometimes contradictory. A beach, where there are people playing in the water, with a factory in the background can be seen as a criticism of leisure-based society just as it can be seen as showing up the destruction of nature – mindlessness in the face of environmental issues. At the same time, the same image shows a contrasting set of notions: pleasure, games, bodies, loving relationships and the sickly sweet color of the water evoking the lost idea of beauty, or those ancient pictures in which bodies float like purgatory. I am so curious I let myself get pulled along to almost voyeurism. The way people behave fascinates me but I don’t try to understand what it’s all about. My part is neutral – all I do is take note of what comes to me. I am rigid because I take a stance and then I wait for things to come to pass in front of me. I am open because the image is defined by what happens. The experience of photography becomes an open practice for experiencing the world.
25
Aug
Going Dutch in Rome
Deep in Rome’s Parioli neighborhood, the Dutch Embassy has just been reopened after two years of refurbishment and a major design upgrade. The Delft-based firm cepezed took on the challenge of turning a richly-decorated neoclassical villa from 1929 into a stunning contemporary edifice that’s a haven for embassy staff.
While the old building – in particular its white neoclassical facade (see above, left) was carefully restored – a later addition to the building received a radical transformation: it’s now clad in beautifully textured, lightly rusted Cor-Ten steel plates that make what’s new look old and worn, but utterly with-it. It’s the perfect solution for a city that’s 2760 years old.
The interiors were stripped down to their original frame to be completely rearranged and decorated with Dutch modern art (including works by Jan Cremer, Jan Dibbets, Louis Copier, Carel Willink, Aline Thomassen, Fons Brasser, Charlotte Dumas and Hannes Wallrafen), so that the building’s lobby is a study in sleekness, with metal stools, glass tables and sculptures.
Royal Netherlands Embassy, Via Michele Mercati 8, tel. 0632286001.
Another fabulous Friday photo from Susan Sanders, this one taken in the Valley of the Colosseum, near the Arch of Constantine.
For more of Susan’s photos, visit her Rome With A View photo blog.
