I often say that I’m a photographer first. That is to say, I’m not a daredevil who is out to document all the hard-to-reach places he’s gotten into, rather that I want a chance at the best possible shot regardless of how hard or easy access is. However, to a certain extent Italy has me rethinking this. I don’t mean that I’m now more willing to take big risks for little payoff in the way of shots, but that I’m recognizing that the experience of being on edge and flushed with adrenaline is sometimes as much part of the creative process as anything else.
Urbex photography is dominated by its own tropes and expectations which can act as guardrails to neophytes but can leave much within the genre looking and feeling the same. One way of counteracting this tendency is to seek out new things and places to photograph and the attending risks that come with them, which brings us back to the subject of Italian villas.
I don’t want to overstate the risks we faced in Italy lest I get accused of exaggerations and dramatizing. The info we got before the trip was largely correct: you were unlikely to get hassled or arrested if you kept a low profile and didn’t do anything destructive. That said, you can’t help but be a little on edge when you’re in a foreign country, doing ostensibly illegal things. And I’m finding that that nervous energy, paired with new and different architecture to photograph, is a heady mixture. Here is what it got me on this trip.
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Above, a ruined tile floor common in Tuscany, leading up to a fireplace.
Below: various halls and stairwells
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Sometimes, trying to nervously work quickly and quietly backfires. I took another more detailed shot of the vaulted ceiling seen above and didn’t notice it was just out of focus.
Below: I thought about putting this shot in a previous post on Italian ceilings, but this one is notable not for its excessive decoration but rather for the fact that the reeds used in the original construction are visible now that the plaster has fallen away.
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Below: yes, the old lesson still apllies. Always look up.
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That adrenaline was quite palapable in the chapel below, where a trick of acoustics made it seem there were men with dogs just outside looking for me. I would have loved to shoot more in here, but hastily left after this exposure.
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Lastly: one of my favorite shots of the trip, a simple function of being in the right place at the right time.
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Thanks for reading through this post! More Italy coming soon.
T A B U L A R A S A photography 