A year ago to the day (well, almost) we were in the Italian City of Bergamo. Seems a bit unreal now, looking back - it wasn't long afterwards that the city was badly hit in the first wave of Covid-19. For weeks we saw dreadful images coming from the hospitals as they were overwhelmed with patients. We don't hear much about it nowadays, which, I was going to write, was probably a good thing but a quick search would indicate that the Bergamo story isn't over yet. The whole COVID-19 thing is going to run&run, it would appear.
I printed a lot from that short trip after I got back but there were one or two negatives lurking in the files that didn't get the full treatment and here's a couple for you today. Both taken in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiori - handheld at some stupidly slow shutter speed on the M6 with, if I remember correctly, a 90mm lens. It printed OK on 9.5"x7" paper but I'm not sure it would scale up without issues.
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| I cropped this slightly, but I wanted to get some of the people in to show the sense of scale in this building. The craftsmanship of the stonemasons and ornamental plasterers is rather impressive - that lovely soft Italian light coming through the windows is just perfect for showing off the subtlety of the whole thing. |
You really need a view camera with a lot of negative real estate to do justice in these sorts of environments. I'm not sure tripods were allowed in the Basilica, but even if they were it was a busy old place and I wouldn't feel too comfortable using one. Plus it is, after all, a place of worship and not just there to be photographed.
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| A far cry from a Presbyterian dissenter's Church in Northern Ireland. While I can look in wonder at the design and skill involved it's not for me. Give me a wee country Church with plain white-washed walls and not much else. It's what you're used to, I guess. Both on HP5+ printed on MGV RC paper. |
Many churches are beautiful and awesome (in the original sense of the word) and I sometimes wonder what secular uses the buildings could be put to. Libraries? Theatres? I guess most of the space above head height in the basilica you photographed is unsuitable for practical use. Perhaps the basilica (religious) could become a secular basilica, which was a public building for courts and so on in Roman times. There's a small church in downtown Gangneung that's been converted to a theatre, which is quite nice. In St. John's Newfoundland there is an impressive stone church that was turned into a strip club. I'm a filthy, godless atheist, but even to me that seems slightly insulting. Or, at the very least, a waste of a lovely building.
ReplyDeleteA strip club does seem a little inappropriate, I agree - but it was probably a marketing masterstroke. We don't get too many churches up for sale around here - most seem to be thriving, which I find somewhat amazing, but the Northern Irish folk have always liked their sermons.
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