Italia

Italy asked to be witnessed rather than captured, and film was the right tool for that, slow and committed and unforgiving in the best way. The work focused on the ordinary life running alongside the extraordinary, two elderly women leaning into each other on a graffiti-tagged street in Florence, a man in an orange jacket standing still on a bridge while the city goes on behind him, nuns cutting past a Roman doorway in the midday sun. The scenes moved from Puglia's white harbor towns and blue fishing boats to the terracotta rooftops of Lucca to the Trevi Fountain lit against a crowd of silhouettes at night, and each frame was a single committed choice with no second-guessing after the shutter. The process drew from natural light, unhurried observation, and the particular quality film gives to color and shadow, where everything feels like it happened a little further in the past than it actually did.