date » 03-09-2026 08:04
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tags » luigi ghirri and franco fontana italian photographers, fontana colors of lucania south italy, allah akbar, landscape photography franco fontana uber alles, street photograhy america franco fontana,
Franco Fontana, photographer. He’s dead.
And ninety-two years is a damn good run—a worldly one, for sure. Way back when, Fontana even drifted into these Land (Lucania South Italy) circles; as I recall, hordes of trigger-happy hacks (infuriated pixel-addicts trapped in their own onanistic loop) rushed to bow before the "colorist" Fontana. A man who left his mark across the World and many Galery, as pages of that d'antan monograph published by the then Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri: I Grandi Fotografi" inside it many images of Lucania. As "All Colors of Benetton" or American way of life we could and should remember it. So a disempowered reality, an hyper-colorist image born of fantasies or mink coats—go figure. A fellow Romagnolo, Fontana finds himself his countryman Luigi Ghirri, who has also been underground for quite some time......continuedate » 27-05-2026 11:37
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tags » poster on the road, daylight, olympus point and shoot, olympus camedia c 5060 wz, street photograhy, thumberwald,
© archive manunzio
The Overturning of Arcana XII
The Position: In traditional Tarot, the Hanged Man is suspended by one foot, upside down, representing a voluntary pause, a radical shift in perspective, sacrifice, or spiritual enlightenment. Here, the figure is strung up by the shoulders and neck, completely upright, stripped of any enlightened passivity. It looks like a mechanical suspension—an inert body held back by heavy straps.
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date » 26-05-2026 11:15
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tags » poster on the road, daylight, olympus point and shoot, olympus camedia c 5060 wz, street photograhy, thumberwald,
© archive manunzio
The Palimpsest of the Street
A surgical operation of wall tearing, where the casual (or brutally deliberate) pairing creates a perfect semantic short circuit. It holds the entire grammar of urban décollage turning into flesh, irony, and the counting of days.
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date » 20-04-2026 17:11
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tags » artificial intelligence architecture, street photograhy, panasonic s1, umidità relativa, architecture photography, daylight sun set, italian architecture, kemal babdrach, olympus point and shoot c 5060 wz,
© archive manunzio
De Intelligentia Artificialis
Since I have no prejudice between the "living" and the "dead"—the former understood as real data (I will stop with the quotation marks, or it will be a tragedy, however necessary) while the latter is AI.
Let me explain: there is a glimpse of the historic center of this land, barely recorded on old road maps of Italy, which the eye tends to straighten every time I pass by. Thus, the problem is solvable with those damned things called view cameras; specifically, after leveling it on a tripod, through Tilt & Shift movements, everything "straightens up." So be it, local traffic aside. But we have been in the Digital Era for twenty years (not E.F., but E.F.D. That is to say, the first Era is that of ruspante Fascism, made of caricature and papier-mâché, like the film Scipione l'Africano... indeed of that Ventennio and how it tragically ended. And since everything "recycles," that capital D in the Littorio style stands for the current Digital. Everlasting Fascism of which, coincidentally, the Fellini of Amarcord speaks, as he does in the book "Making a Movie" published by Einaudi Italian Publisher).
Let us come to us, then. The glimpse that, to be honest, I could very well capture with the fifty-millimeter (Tilt & Shift) on the Panasonic Lumix S1 in full Full Frame; but it is another era and I would no longer know how to do architecture like that: years pass, atmospheres and the gait change, the elderly step that no longer holds the same head of twenty years ago (daje with the Ventennio!). So? After giving the file—alongside the original shot—to Google's AI Gemini (may God preserve it. Amen), the result ends here... then maybe I’ll come back to it, and yet the chords are what I was looking for. But radio silence is mandatory.Ps. It is a galactic piece of nonsense to say that the "machine" has "capacities" that are, if not superior, let’s say intellectual, to those of the Humanoid who believes himself to be God and wants to play the part: machines do not drink, they do not eat... they give numbers, perhaps good for the Bingo, but nothing more than that—at least for those who have a holistic vision of the surroundings: they are machines for making stock market "forecasts" and what else?
date » 30-03-2026 11:38
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tags » thumberwal, street photograhy, olympus c 5060 wz, point and shoot camera on street, daylight, urban life, fascism era, black color as death,
Black is Black? No Black is Nothing
This stubborn, leaden sky forces this vertical biped—the tout court human—to go about, of all things, dressed (!?) in a single, definitive shade: Black. Capitalized, for reasons as heavy as this asphalt we walk on. It’s less a 'color' and more a naked exposure of these flat, pedestrian city thoughts; maybe 'cadaverous' is a better word. Dead thoughts walking.
If my historical memory serves, this wasn't the last time this kind of soot-black uniform was considered 'fashionable' around these specific Italian latitudes: Fascism. Sure, elsewhere (Europe in primis) there was a similar film of dust,, but the air felt different. It was quieter. Diminished, perhaps, but at least not this loud, look-at-me display that pretends not to look. For those who catch my meaning.
It's a fact: back then, everything was reduced to two tones—like this photograph, like the papers, the newsreels flickering in smoke-choked cinema halls. But. And this 'but' is for the Boot (geographic shape) itself or named 'Belpaese' (not let's not confuse that phrase with the soft cheese—that black wasn't a choice but was de facto uniformity again The Fascismo. The history books tell us exactly how that performance ended. But. Morto un Papa se ne fa un altro, as they say, or... maybe they just don't? 'Ni'—yes and no.
So, setting the metaphor aside (though I’m not sure how much I’ve set it aside), look at this scene. This current, lazy black of the jackets, the shoes, the everything. It's not depth. It's a dip into the same sticky, black pitch that, when you look closely, is just the Blackness of Death, settling in wherever the eye lands.
Sic transit gloria mundi! And this traffic we are creating is just the slowest, grimmest parade.
This stubborn, leaden sky forces this vertical biped—the tout court human—to go about, of all things, dressed (!?) in a single, definitive shade: Black. Capitalized, for reasons as heavy as this asphalt we walk on. It’s less a 'color' and more a naked exposure of these flat, pedestrian city thoughts; maybe 'cadaverous' is a better word. Dead thoughts walking.If my historical memory serves, this wasn't the last time this kind of soot-black uniform was considered 'fashionable' around these specific Italian latitudes: Fascism. Sure, elsewhere (Europe in primis) there was a similar film of dust,, but the air felt different. It was quieter. Diminished, perhaps, but at least not this loud, look-at-me display that pretends not to look. For those who catch my meaning.
It's a fact: back then, everything was reduced to two tones—like this photograph, like the papers, the newsreels flickering in smoke-choked cinema halls. But. And this 'but' is for the Boot (geographic shape) itself or named 'Belpaese' (not let's not confuse that phrase with the soft cheese—that black wasn't a choice but was de facto uniformity again The Fascismo. The history books tell us exactly how that performance ended. But. Morto un Papa se ne fa un altro, as they say, or... maybe they just don't? 'Ni'—yes and no.
So, setting the metaphor aside (though I’m not sure how much I’ve set it aside), look at this scene. This current, lazy black of the jackets, the shoes, the everything. It's not depth. It's a dip into the same sticky, black pitch that, when you look closely, is just the Blackness of Death, settling in wherever the eye lands.
Sic transit gloria mundi! And this traffic we are creating is just the slowest, grimmest parade.
date » 21-02-2026 17:31
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tags » street photograhy, urban reportage, urban life, terminal bus, daylight, olympus camera point and shoot,
© archive manunzio
The Bus StopThis photograph captures a universal ritual. It is not about a specific location or a technical data sheet; it is about the moment before something happens.
The Composition: The image is divided by a strong perspective. On the left, a solid wall and the people; on the right, the empty road stretching into the distance. This creates a visual tension between staying and going.
The Subject: We see silhouettes, not faces. They represent anyone, from New York to London, from Rome to Bangladesh, who has ever waited for a journey to begin. The suitcases and the turned backs emphasize a sense of detachment and anticipation that belongs to every traveler.
The BUS Sign: The word painted on the asphalt in the foreground acts as the title of the scene. It is upside down for the viewer but correctly oriented for the incoming vehicle, marking the exact spot where the wait ends.
The Light: The soft, vignetted edges focus the attention on the center, removing unnecessary distractions. It is a clean shot of a simple, daily human routine, stripped of any identifiers of the here and now.
In a world full of disposable images via cellulars, this photo chooses to show the silence and the space of the wait, rather than the noise of the arrival.
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