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The Bookcase
5 December 2024
One runs out of room. There was no place to hang this Italian watercolor of the Duomo in Firenze. No place where we could see it and be reminded of the trip to Italy we sent our parents on for their 50th anniversary.
The Bookcase. Nikon D200 with 18-200mm Nikkor at 105mm, f5.6, 0.5 second and ISO 800.
The walls in the studio are lined with bookshelves, floor to ceiling. We have found this to be excellent insulation, particularly because it does not require new sheetrock for existing walls.
But there are disadvantages when you want to hang a picture.
But it occurred to us that we don't really walk around reading the spines of our books unless we are looking for something. And in that case, we are pretty quick to narrow down the search because everything is in alphabetical order by category.
So if we were looking for some other title by Benedetto Croce, the Italian philosopher of the last century, it would likely be behind our print. And we could just move the print for a moment to get it.
So we started hanging a few images on the bookcases.
This is a particularly happy pairing, we thought as, one morning, we took a few low-light shots in the studio.
The painting depicts a side street with a view of the cathedral's copula in the distance, as if to say, even in an alley there is a place for beauty. And the title of the Croce volume (the only one I could find from his collected works) includes his essays on philosophy, poetry and history. In one book, several topics that he focused his incisive intellect on.
When we see them now, passing by, we are reminded to make an effort, even a little one, on what's important to us. You never know where it may lead.