agitater

At first glance, you might find this old doorway at the entrance to an 90 year old house somewhat quaint; maybe even possessed of some shabby elegance. A closer looks reveals cracked and peeling paint, broken stonework, cracked stucco, rot everywhere, mold, leaking windows and broken woodwork. Nobody loves this place anymore. Too bad - it used to be lovely. I like the angles and the textures. The sign lying on the right fell off the front of a sandwich joint next door but nobody bothered to pick it up for several days.

It's a mathematical formula that goes something like this:

6 year old + (balloon animal x leopard print jacket) + hair bow/pink heart = Big Smile. QED!

Mostly unnoticed, even by locals, this sign over the multi-level parking garage in Kensington Market near Chinatown in downtown Toronto looks great in the right light. With any sort of side light though (i.e., late morning to mid afternoon), it looks like the rusty, partly corroded old thing that it is. Time for a refurb. Still, it's part of the downtown landscape.

Everything pictured in this photo is worn out. There is little more than what you see here that is left of the entire old, narrow, two-storey house either. It is rotted through and through, so there is no point in trying to restore the eighty year old place. It was a home on a neighbourhood street corner for the first part of its existence. For many years after it housed a small neighbourhood grocery store. Then it was made over into a coffee shop. Then it was abandoned.

This photo was taken at the June 2007 during the Taste of Italy weekend on College Street in Toronto. The little girl on the left kept running ahead of her parents, pausing every so often for them to catch up. Problem was, her parents kept losing sight of her. I watched them all for a few minutes and by the time I made this shot the girl's parents were starting to get getting downright cranky about the disappearances.

The city council chamber at City Hall in Toronto, at the north end of Nathan Philips Square, looks like an alien spacecraft getting ready to lift off. Lots of people come to the square just before sunset to watch shafts of sunlight lance between the curved towers on either side of the council chamber and split the fountain spouts into little rainbows. Some couples linger as the night lights come up. This pair had been sitting and talking and laughing for at least an hour.

A Taste of Italy, in the Italian Village in west/downtown Toronto along the College Street strip, is a blast every year. But with Night of Living Dead on a double bill with La Dolce Vita at the old Royal Theatre and with this zombified looking bunch of people all headed down the middle of the street in the same direction right in front of the theatre, I couldn't resist making this low angle shot.

Psychic everything . . . and only $20! You name it, she has got it. She will even take your photo and give you career advice and sort out your relationship and read your aura(s). Seriously. Not really.

I am not really sure I want to call that phone number? Still, the interesting old storefront is a great location for a pop-up. Lots of old wood and beautifully aged textures inside and out.

Tatooed, tired, destitute and resigned, Cassie really does want to go home. Problem is, she has felt that way for a long time. She doesn't have much of a home to go back to though, so here she sits begging as she does every day. She is no longer sure what mistake she made. She is not really sure of anything any more.

Among street people, women usually have the toughest time. These four look desolate because that is just what they are, with little hope and little future too often.

Glenn the Homeless Guy was what he called himself. When I met him on a chilly, late winter afternoon, he was out of it and trying to sleep on a steam grate. Problem was, he had no sleeping gear of any kind and no hat of any kind. I gave him a toque (I always carry a couple of spare ones for the street people I talk to) but he really looked and talked like he was giving up. Big city streets in winter are harsh places. He died in a local shelter about a month after I took this photo.

The face is that of a man who had lived on the street and in homeless shelters for the better part of 15 years when this photo was made. He is only 35 years old, but looks 55 and the tough life he leads is etched on his face and in his eyes. We talked, I donated a few dollars to the cause and he agreed to a few shots.

The Palazzo Barberini is home to the National Museum of Art in Rome, and is also part of the network of advanced art schools in Rome. Every day, you can find students perched all over the place, studying, sketching, talking and generally living a really interesting life in a really interesting place. Rome is fascinating.

Temple church, most recently made famous as one of the destination clues in Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code, is a treasure in the middle of London. The Temple Church is a late 12th-century church in London located between Fleet Street and the River Thames, built for and by the Knights Templar as their English headquarters. It was consecrated in 1158. In modern times, two Inns of Court (Inner Temple and Middle Temple) both use the church. It is famous for its effigy tombs and for being a round church. It was heavily damaged during blitz bombing in the Second World War but has been largely restored. This photo was made in the middle courtyard. The woman works nearby I think, and at the end of the day comes to the courtyard to sit on one of the ancient stone benches to text, check email and relax for a moment before going home or heading off to dinner. It was a gorgeous late afternoon in London, the light was warm and gentle, and I nearly fell asleep on one of the benches myself after getting this shot.

The steps of St. Martin's in the Field, right across the street from Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery in London, attract all manner of protesters, tract pushers, demonstrators, kibitzers, jokers, nuts, sycophants, travellers, acolytes and plenty of weirdos. This pleasant woman seemed to be a Buddhist intent on maintaining a peace vigil in support of Tibetan monks. I think that's what she was doing. I'm not really sure, because when I asked her she just smiled at me, tapped her little drum and chanted quietly. I'm really not sure what she was on about. Seemed harmless enough though, and her yellow jacket and safron wrap looked wonderfully colourful.

Homelessness in Rome, in Italian it's called senzatetto, is a problem (as in all other big cities) which grows in direct proportion to economic recession and poverty. These two older women have banded together for mutual support and protection from gypsies and other street people who would try to hurt them and steal from them. The carts (two old wheelchairs) are piled high with all their worldly possessions. They use newspapers to protect themselves from the damp ground. They also use newspapers in the autumn, winter and spring to put under their clothing at night to help keep out the chill. They were chatting pleasantly to each other as I took this photo.

This detail from the fountain of the Goddess Juno is part of one of the four fountains at the corner of Via delle Quattro Fontane and Via del Quirinale in Rome. It's a busy corner, with vanishingly narrow sidewalks, cars rushing by along the narrow streets, and lots and lots of people squeezing through as well. The sculptor was Domenico Fontana who completed the work in 1590. It's caked with decades of air pollution, traffic grime and you-name-it, but it is still a remarkable work of art.

This shot was taken from the upper gallery of the Colosseum looking northwest. It's a snapshot of a time in ancient history when Imperial Rome ruled everything. The old villa on the hill in the background is one of the many 1,200 year old places still in use in Rome. Since the earliest days of the empire, as far as anyone knows, there has always been an important house or villa on the hill. The scene looks much like it did when Constantine was emperor.

The sun is not yet down on this early evening in Spoleto, but it's dark in the narrow old streets because the light cannot get through. A young man in his apartment is watching the tourists and locals from his window above the street.

Ancient buildings in Pisa line the banks of the Arno river. There is quite a bit of traffic in the river too - houseboats, small freight barges, the occasional patrol boat, some private motor boats, all of them watched by people walking along the riverside streets. At the end of each day, the river traffic ceases until sunrise. Sunset also brings out the colours of the old stucco, rendering the whole cityscape in powerful, sharp tones, and pretty light. We stood for almost twenty minutes watching the sun set and the colours gradually fade. It was a memorable evening.

Streets scenes just like this abound in Rome. After an early morning rain, we walked a series of long winding streets lined with shops, cafes and galleries, heading in the general direction of the river and the ponte Sant'Angelo. The morning light and the humidity after the rain made all the colours sharp and bright. It was a beautiful day.

We really loved walking and wandering in Pienza. It's a little town with an wonderful history. Pienza was actually rebuilt from a village called Corsignano, which was the birthplace (in 1405) of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, a Renaissance humanist born into an exiled Sienese family, who later became Pope Pius II. The rebuilding, designed by Florentine architect Bernardo Gambarelli (known as Bernardo Rossellino) which began in 1459 was based almost entirely on the then-new humanist style, and was the first town design of its kind. To this day, the town sparkles with life, it's easy to get around, and there's a sense of freshness and vigour everywhere you look. Pienza is a world heritage site. Rows of tulip pots like the one pictured, can be found on every stone wall throughout the town in Spring. Those are grapevines in the background. Everybody makes their own wine here, and it's all very, very good.

The astonishing facade of the Siena Cathedral is a rare design. The main stone consists of alternating stripes of white marble blocks and greenish-black marble blocks. The cathedral was originally designed and completed between 1215 and 1263 on the site of an earlier church that had been built in the 9th century. The stripe effect, visually both inside and outside the church, is quite breathtaking. The list of great artists and sculptors who have through commissions and papal orders decorated the grand edifice is amazing: di Giovani, di Francesco, Pisano, Vecchietta, Chesi, di Bartolo and Minella among many others. It's an art gallery of priceless works. It is so dark inside the church though that photography is pointless even with the very best low light cameras. The facade of Siena Cathedral is one of the most fascinating in all of Italy and certainly one of the most impressive sights in Siena, combining elements of French Gothic, Tuscan Romanesque, and Classical architecture. Built using polychrome marble, the work was overseen by Giovanni Pisano whose work on the Duomo’s facade and pulpit was influenced by his father Nicola Pisano.

The dome over the presbytery is a mix of great painting, stained glass and sculpture by a range of notable artists, commissioned and contributed by various popes, the Doria family, and a range of other wealthy patrons since the late 13th century. The original church was completed in 1125, but rebuilt in the gothic style in 1278. The interior is so dark, to protect the wonderful artwork, that photography is almost impossible. I think this photo shows the remarkable beauty of the place along with the rhythmic rise and fall of the ceiling arches.