Retratos de familia

Recolecto fotos de familia de todo el mundo durante años. No sé por qué tengo esta pasión, son las fotos que todos descartan, que todos tiran tan pronto como alguien muere … Son parte de una historia que aparentemente no es universal, quizás demasiado común, demasiado trivial. Bueno, entre mis fotografías (ahora tengo más de 2000 originales) de diferentes países, Francia, Bélgica, Italia, Rumania, España, Filipinas y los Estados Unidos, tomadas desde finales del siglo XIX hasta nuestros días. Pero colecciono hasta los años sesenta, básicamente.

Las fotos de familia son universales. Entre ellos reconocemos algunos rasgos comunes. Quien tenía una cámara en esos días era una persona de clase media / alta. Es cierto que la fotografía, desde su invención, siempre ha sido un medio bastante popular … no necesitaba tener habilidades artísticas particulares, la máquina hacía lo suyo y reproduciendo que estaba frente a ella. Lo que es seguro es que entre las placas de vidrio, los negativos de varios formatos comprados o regalados hay muchas imágenes fuera de foco, o con el defecto de paralaje, pero entre muchos desechos hay muchas cosas interesantes. Hay  cómo saberlas leer.

Es una historia común, pero que revela muchos pequeños matices de diferentes culturas, amor por la familia, por las cosas que la rodean (la casa, el automóvil, los viajes con amigos).

En nuestro tiempo tomamos fotos con un teléfono móvil y muchos eligen las redes sociales como un medio de conservación, algunos ocasionalmente intentan descargarlos a la computadora, pero luego caen en el abismo del almacenamiento, demasiadas fotos, demasiada memoria en la computadora, sin saber cuál elegir y cuáles descartar, porque con el teléfono celular o la cámara digital disparas en ráfaga.

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Entre los muchos que he encontrado, hay algunos fotógrafos de cierto nivel, que ya forman parte de la historia.

Entre ellos, Harrison Putney (1864-1950) y la intrigante historia de las fotos de Leavensworth (Kansas), Joseph Judd Pennell (1866-1922) y Francisco Van Camp (1840 C.a). 
En breve te contaré la historia de estas fotos

 

Valentina Sounds and her new video project

Valentina Sounds  (Valentina Raffaelli) is a full time musician, indie songwriter,and music teacher based out of Philadelphia. Born and raised in Italy, she moved here to study Jazz Vocal Performance at University of the Arts and then proceeded to start her career in music, performing and wiring for several original projects such as Sunshine Superman (youtube.com/sunshinesupermanpa) and Sparkle Pony (www.sparkleponyband.com).

After years of playing in bands she decided to start her own solo act, working just off of her vocalizer and vocal loop, which she uses to create live arrangements of originals and covers. The show is amazing.

She just launched her new video “I can’t stand the rain” originally recorded by Ann Peebles in 1973.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmoY_Lk8epo

 

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Valentina’s version is original, fresh, indipendent….

If you feel compelled to support her in her artistic endeavors please check out www.patreon.com/valentinasounds. You won’t be disappointed, much is coming your way from this eclectic gal, and it could be anything from cooking, to music, to piano and voice lessons!

We’re glad to present her in MaiMia, Welcome Valentina!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmoY_Lk8epo

(Please click on the link up there to see the video)

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(Photos by Costanza Mansueti)

 

 

 

Costanza Mansueti : Her’s images trigger some unexpected memories…

From the introduction of the book STAND STILL

by

Silvia Cavallini

When Costanza told me she was renting a room in Waltham in February to take some photos, I thought she was nuts. Waltham is a small, nondescript town near Boston. It lacks the grand buildings of New York, or Boston, or of the nearby Harvard University. In February, the temperature stays below freezing and the sun stays away. The streets are deserted as people dash in the dim light to their cars hoping to arrive home before roads freeze and they skid into a ditch. To makes things more interesting, Costanza arrived just before a storm that dumped 30 cm of snow. Schools were closed, police asked everyone to stay home, and planes and trains went nowhere. Massachusetts slept. Costanza had no cell phone, and would trudge through knee-deep snow to a coffee shop to call me. I was home with a high fever, and missed several of her calls. So she trudged a lot.

Though as a journalist and sometime news photographer I understand that good photos are more about your eyes than your surroundings, I hoped that, as a photographer whose formative years were in Florence, immersed in great art and architecture, her trip would not be in vain. It wasn’t. The beauty that Costanza captures is not a conventional beauty. Rather, her lens shows us what we would see if we slowed down a little, if we lifted our eyes from our to-do lists of time-sucking daily tasks and remembered that we should be open to unexpected beauty everyday.

Costanza beautifully captures the tension between wide and almost abstract shots and minute details, with the lights still on; unfinished projects and roads that lead to nowhere. Her’s images trigger some unexpected memories, of the dream-like train scene in Hayao Miyazaki’s film ‘Spirited Away,’ or of Michaelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Il Deserto Rosso’ (Red Desert).

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Costanza Mansueti

– Photographer –

http://www.costanzamansueti.com

Email:  mansueticostanza@gmail.com

  +34 602 539 778