Photography as a keyhole

Photography is certainly a good tool, for processing and otherwise. It surely helps if you notice as if tomorrow you won’t be able to notice any more. For the day will come.

Today’s musing is brought to you by three quotations on photography which I’ve come across recently:

We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.
~Ralph Hattersley (reblogged from myguiltypleasures)

All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.
~Elliott Erwitt

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
~Dorothea Lange (the last two quotations reblogged from Jane Lurie Photography)

Usually I post happy pictures – universally “pretty”, be it picture-postcard cliché or quirky. But sometimes what I see is not all that nice, and I try to understand and fail. Still at other times it makes me love these people even more.

Rome’s Monteverde is a good testing ground with real people, dogs, cats, seagulls, parrots and plants. Today I’ll focus on the first and last and show you what all is growing around here and how people help.

Rome is this. A kind of paradise.

Some plants are transported this way.

Some are arranged and movable.

A peculiar set-up.

He says that he wishes to integrate into the society without charity but by earning 50 cents for sweeping the pavement. Brooms and cleaning agents welcome too.

If someone thinks it’s easy, it ain’t. The tree above is shedding.

And then there’s this. Some trash is just not towed away for a myriad of complicated reasons.

But sometimes… the street provides protection.

I took these two years ago. Not sure about the plant in question. I don’t think it survived.

Another one this April. Not looking too good.

This one is thriving though. Also in April.

By May it has grown into a real bush. Do you know what it is?

This is now: there is an oven, one blossom on our bush, and a papyrus a bit further on.

Tadaaa! And so the street is richer for one hibiscus!

Then I found this photo from last September. Even more blossoms on the same bush!

This papyrus needs a lot of water. Someone must water it around the clock. (Hm… Not sure if it’s growing here or it’s been brought out like this in the basket.)

Around the corner a fig tree has grown. By chance, I’m sure.

This banana tree is not street-grown. It’s in a garden.

And this is Luigino, the sign says.

Luigino, the keeper of the succulents. Monteverde, live on!