These photographs were made during a 2000 vacation, as tourists. Our first time in Europe, they represent the somewhat naive reaction of a person used to surroundings with little cultural history (if lucky a mere few hundred years) to an environment with evidence of the origins of that cultural history back to it’s beginnings. Amazing artifacts of rich and old endeavor, much of it the origins of western culture, casually found in nooks and crannies everywhere. Lucca, It 9 for example, just stuff laying around in the back yard of a museum, possibly older than white American culture entirely, possibly made last year. I had no photographic expectations when we started, the purpose was primarily a vacation and new places. Some have been amazed I managed to come back from Italy with not a single frame with a human.. for some reason that came naturally. On the other hand, there is no image without a strong human presence. Actually the night photographs in Venice did have people walking through, but the exposures were so long they didn’t register on the film.

Technical information- All of this work was made with my Plaubel Makina W67, on 120 Ilford XP1, much of it hand held. The prints are on 17×22″ william Turner, image size 15 x 19.2″. These were some of my first quadtone prints, along with some landscapes. The inks used for the first few numbers was the first Piezography inks released, referred to now as the “sundance” inks. Despite some problems in the marketplace they performed very well for me in my old Epson 3000s, and those early prints still look great. Additional prints in the editions have been with either the Piezotone inks sets, custom blended, or now custom blends made from the K7 sets.