I cannot believe I’m reflecting on a decade of my love affair with Italy, but here we are!
This reflection is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time but life and jobs and commitments seem to pop up more and more often the older I get. But that’s not to say I haven’t been continually reflecting on my life and love affair with Italy on an almost daily basis for the past 10 years — it’s not a place that’s easily shaken.
It’s a tale as old as time to say that Italy “inspired” me, but it’s true. I feel like I’m joining the chorus of Eat, Pray, Love-ers and the Under the Tuscan Sun-ers who make traveling and living in far-off lands their entire personality. But maybe those wonderlust-fuls are on to something because as hard as I might try I don’t think I could ever remove Italy from the core of who I am. And why would I want to? The land that birthed empires and sculpted Davids and produced La Dolce Vita sounds like a pretty fantastic place to be associated with. Even if it is the biggest (and sometimes obnoxious) part of your personality.
In 2012, when I was a study abroad student, I took just over 10,000 photos in about 90 days. 99% of those “images” are long, long forgotten. I was in the stage of my photography journey where I felt the need to capture every little thing, no matter how trivial. There are only perhaps a dozen images that I would still claim and of those only two or three that I am still particularly proud of. That study abroad experience was a necessary sensory overload. I pointed my camera at anything and everything. I needed that experience to lose the first-time jitters. I wasn’t seeing.
Photography at times has served as an escape for me. To be an outside observer into the lives of others. It became a particularly useful coping mechanism when I was in the throes of culture shock back when I moved to Italy in 2016 to live and work. Throughout my time living there, photography was what grounded me there. It was the experience of capturing a moment in time that helped me feel present in my life.
I was fortunate to return to Italy in October 2022. It was on this trip the confidence that comes from age coupled with professional skills honed through a pandemic of solitude created some of the work I am most proud of in my artistic endeavors. That trip allowed me to experience Florence in ways I wasn’t able to when I lived there. It was like being a tourist in your hometown. Without the obligation of work I was able to wander to my heart's content. Or sit for hours in a piazza.
The works displayed here span from the fall of 2012 to October 2022 and represent the story of not only my photographic development but also the maturing of my worldview. This ten-year journey of artistic development was born, nurtured, and matured in the cradle of the Renaissance, but I carry Italy with me everywhere I go now. It’s weaved into my very being.
It is my immense honor to participate in a benefit art show to fund a scholarship for the program I once worked for. Studying abroad changed my life — first as a college student and second as an adult. As a student, the world was opened to me and nothing felt out of reach. As an adult, students edified me, encouraged me, and impressed me with their eagerness and enthusiasm semester after semester. The 300+ students whose lives I was able to affect will forever be one of my most proud achievements. What a beautiful, full-circle moment it is to contribute works from my very own study abroad experience to help shape the lives of future students, many I will likely never know.
The three years I spent in Italy were some of the most challenging I’ve ever experienced. But they were also the most rewarding, inspirational, and dreamy years, too. Looking back on these images as I gathered them for this collection brought back so, so many memories. Some are so vivid in my mind I can also feel the early fall breeze, hear laughing from just around the villa’s corner, and smell the pasta about to be served. I hope they impart those same sensations and unlock perhaps dormant memories in you, too.
The images below are only a selection of all I’ve created over the past decade. For more exhaustive (though not yet comprehensive) collection of my Italy work, CLICK HERE
