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- Portfolio / Photographer Deborah Swain
- 2022-12-12T19:04:21+01:00
- 2022-12-12T19:04:21+01:00
January 2022: Chasing the low sun and long shadows
Days of winter.
The weather in Rome is often good in January. Limpid azure skies, a low sun and long shadows make for a light that is unique to this time of year. The start of 2022 didn't disappoint in this respect.
Right at the start of the new year I made a kind of resolution that in 2022 I would post fewer images on social media, step off the treadmill of feeding the beast, and instead focus on choosing a handful of my best shots at the end of each month. This does rather fly in the opposite direction of the trending 365 project, and the pressure to post something every day, but that's fine by me.
For this blog in particular I set myself the task of choosing just two favourite shots this month that evoke January in Rome for me. Happy New Year!
Urban geometry and umbrellas: a rainy day in Rome
Sometimes the simplest of thematic ideas present themselves. We may enjoy many warm and sunny days throughout the year in Rome, Italy, but when it does rain here, it really pours; rarely does it merely drizzle. (Fun fact: annual rainfall in the eternal city actually exceeds that of London.) When the heavens opened recently on a mild autumn day, the city was instantly transformed: wet streets, gleaming San Pietrini cobblestones, umbrellas everywhere, and a sudden quickening of pace by Romans and tourists caught out by the storm. The Ricoh GR II doesn’t love wet weather, but armed with an umbrella and a lens hood, I managed just fine. Here are some of my favourite shots from that day.
Back to Life - Pandemic City (Part 2)
When I first started photographing the streets of Rome during the pandemic for my 20/20 vision project, my primary interest was to record people, and the behavioural differences being played out on the streets in these strange times of social distancing and lockdown.
I live very close to the Vatican City, an area full of businesses that depend on tourism for their very survival. It’s a busy area which is usually thronging with crowds. Now there are many shuttered shop fronts, and permanently closed restaurants. Tourism is still predominately domestic at time of writing, but very recently, as restrictions slowly lift, there are suddenly more people on the streets. The atmosphere is charged again with an albeit faint buzz of human activity and renewed energy. I hope these recent photographs convey this.
20/20 Vision - Pandemic City (Part 1)
A photography project dictated by the circumstances of 2020 recording the streets of Rome in suspended animation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As last year drew to a close and I started editing a selection of the most representative images from that year, it became clear to me that I needed to separate my 2020 street photography from my earlier "unstaged tableaux vivants" and urban landscapes.
Italy endured some of the toughest Covid-19 restrictions in the world, with months of lockdown, but also periods of relative freedom of movement. The images collated here are not a political statement and neither do they represent any personal acts of rebellion: I did not leave the house during periods of national quarantine to photograph the emptiness of the city. Instead, these are the photos I took while out and about on the streets of Rome whenever it was legally possible to do so, truthfully recording everyday life unfolding around me. I had no agenda other than seeing for myself how life outside my door was actually being lived during these strange times.
The project, like the pandemic, continues …. Part 2 to follow.
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- Info Photographer Deborah Swain
- 2022-12-12T19:04:21+01:00
- 2022-12-12T19:04:21+01:00
I'm Deborah Swain, a British-born creative professional and photographer based in Rome, Italy.
I'm passionate about street, social documentary, and urban landscape photography. Most of my photographs are candid street scenes - Unstaged Tableaux Vivants - but I also occasionally take street portraits.
I would like my street photograph to feel like an immersive experience, as if you are on the street with me and have just happened upon the scene. I am a walker not a stalker, so the photographs are dictated primarily by the situations I happen upon as I move rather than waiting in a specific spot for the action to come to me. I am not looking for the sensational. I believe that an intrinsic dramatic or compositional tension can often be found in images of everyday life.
I began my creative life as a painter, but my photography now is closer to the snapshot photographic aesthetic rather than pictorialism.