Italy! People I Photographed. Faces I Remember. Who Were They?

April 15.  For the first time in five years, I wouldn’t be going to Florence either in the summer or Fall. There’s an old saying, “Life got in the Way.” Does it matter how it got in the way?

No. It just did. What mattered was all I’d miss: the streets filled with kids holding ballons with one hand and a parent hand with another. Dogs sniff-sniffing other dogs with tails wagging and owners straining against leashes while window shopping. A merry-go-round in the center of town. The cheesy whiff of pizza on every street corner and bottles of wine in every store window.

Florence is summertime magic and has been for years, but not this year.

I decided to find some of my favorite photos of Florence and think about the people in the photos. Why those photos and those people? What was there about them that stayed with me?

The person I’d miss most was an artist I’d watched from the first visit to Florence.

His easel was set on the corner of a street dominated by the Uffizi. He usually wore a navy shirt, jeans, a scarf tossed casually around his neck and a cap set askew on a head full of grey curls.

He sketched whoever came up to him with careful pencil strokes while he smoked a cigarette.

I never saw him speak a word to his subject, smile, change his expression or talk to anyone nearby. He seemed intent, quiet, focused.

I wanted on all those occasions I stopped to watch him sketch to ask the questions that buzzed in my brain: Who are you? Where did you learn to draw? Where do you live? Do you have kids? What do you think while you’re drawing? Are you married? How old are you?

I asked myself what is there about this artist who lives in Florence and sketches a stone’s throw from the most magnificent structure in Florence? He wears a cap, smokes a cigarette while he’s painting and seems lost in thought while swishing a pencil across the paper?

I’ll never know which is part of his mystique. I’ll miss him.

There are others I took photos of because for some reason I don’t understand, I wanted to know them too.

I remember a little girl wearing an orange blouse with a smile that lit the sky.

A pudgy man with silver hair who looked happy and content.

An elderly gentleman who raised his finger to the person he was talking to. What point was he making? He looked serious and thoughtful with his other hand behind his back.

Have you ever wondered about people you don’t know who interest you enough to take their photo? I’ll miss all of them this year