Meanwhile, in Melbourne, I....

1. Finally put all my very favourite clippings onto twp pinboards. Organised AND inspired, what a combo.
2. Basked in the sun at Systems Garden, Melbourne Uni
3. Was captivated by end of semester art installations, Melbourne Uni.
4. Took sneaky mannequin pics at Portmans (more to come on my mannequin obesession soon).
5-6. Snapped an Armadale afternoon (I am also obsessed with laundromats. Hmm. It appears June was quite the month for idiosyncrasies).
7. Spotted Mr Hendriz hiding out in Windsor.
8. Enjoyed the glow outside Hawksburn station. Finishing work early rocks my world.
9-12. Snapsnapsnapped the ' Light in Winter' installation in Fed Square. By British art collective UVA.

The lost photos - and a lost place

For the girl who snaps and snaps like there is no tomorrow, nothing can be more distressing than a broken camera mid holiday. But then again my Canon IXUS was almost five years old, and in all fairness, I had really put it through its paces. It fizzled and froze and steamed in protest at all the overworking, three weeks into my trip to Rome. Unfortunately, it also fizzled the day after a very long bus trip around Lazio...so long that that one day, I had decided it was too late to upload my photos. I didn't even go through and review any of them. Figuring that changing the CF card and/or battery would fix the snapped snapper, you can imagine my dismay to see "DATA CORRUPTED" in tiny text on the tiny (5 years old, remember) LCD screen. And, following on from this heartbreak, I'm sure you can also imagine my delight upon discovering that Michael's Camera World could indeed extract the precious images from sad old Mr Ixus. Ahhh, it was an oldie, but it sure did take a good photo and the days shots are no exception. Rome roadtrip #3's itinerary doesn't sound that interesting - just some villas and a monastery, so what - but when you combine the day's wild WILD weather with the eerieness which resulted from us being the only visitors at each respective destination, well, let's just say 'atmospheric' does not do it justic at all. Particularly moving was the monastery of San Benedetto in Subiaco (Italy that is, not the suburb of Perth). The entire monastery complex is clinging to a remote mountain cliff and was built around the cave that Saint Benedict lived in as a hermit for three years before establishing a monastic community. San Benedetto was last on our itinerary, and we arrived just as the late winter afternoon was turning into night. The monastery itself was deserted, and from the minute you step inside, there is a feeling of having also stepped back in time, or more accurately to a place where the concept of time doesn't really exist (the twenty first century certainly doesn't exist at San Benedetto). Every wall and ceiling has been frescoed by the monks who have lived in the monastery over the past 1500 years. As we progressed further into the Lower Church, the sense of being in a sacred space increased, and at the heart of the complex, in sacro specco, the remains of the cave St Benedict lived in, I felt an overwhelming sense of smallness against the grand scale of a) time and b) the world itself. I am aware of how prosaic and exaggerated this all sounds, and maybe writing this is discrediting me as an academic a little. But nonetheless, this is how it felt to be in such a sacred space, so far removed from modern secular life. It was quite possibly the highlight of the whole trip (yes, the highlight of an art-trip was a monastery, as strange as that may seem), and I consider myself lucky to have had such an opportunity.

Rome update the second: Hadrian's Villa, Villa D'Este & Tivoli

Well overdue...

Highlights of week three in Rome -- now over sixth months ago, eeps -- included:

- the Baroque art nerd's holy grail, Caravaggio's St Matthew's chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi

- a compare and contrast of Rome's two main Oratorian edifices - the early Baroque Chiesa Nuova, and Borromini's flowing, dynamic facade for the neighbouring Oratory of the Filipini

- a behind the scenes tour of the Quirinal Palace - opulence central, once the Papal summer residence and now the private residence of the President of the Italian republic. Once we had seen the ballroom at the Quirinal Palace, no ballroom stood a chance of impressing us again

- a whistlestop trip around Rome's stational churches, including the vast Santa Maria Maggiore, and the stylistically disjointed San Giovanni in Laterano

- a rainy dinner in the backstreets around Piazza Navona.

Still to come: photo highlights from the fourth and final week in Rome, plus trips around Lazio, and the final Italian week in Siena and Florence. Whew. I am looking forward to being done with these Italian photoposts -- as nice as it is to reminisce, it's about time for some pics of what's happening in the here and now! Soon; soon I say.

Waikato taniwharau, he piko he taniwha, he piko he taniwha*

This is a brief glimpse of a high school photography project that never was. Problem number one -- I had no car; problem number two -- subject clashes meant I never actually took photography back at Macleans. The idea, then and now, was a photo essay on life and death on the Waikato river. The thing that had really caught my attention was the series of roadside crosses that can be found up and down State Highway One, the thought that someone's story had ended too abruptly. The people whose lives had ended on SH1, their stories had ened, but the end of their lives had inextricably linked them to the place - a place they didn't in fact belong to. Yes, this is sounding pretty morbid; just bear with me. In stark contrast with these roadside shrines is the Maori graveyard on Taupiri mountain, just out of Huntly. The people buried there belonged to that land - birth, life and death by the side of the Waikato. The river itself wove through their lives, now they watch over it. Ok, so before I was morbid, now I'm sickeningly metaphoric. It's hard to express in words. In photos, it would have been awesome. My photos are of the Taupiri cemetary, plus another cemetary past Taumaranui, which is dominated by the silhouette of Mt Tongiraro. The Taupiri ones turned out better than I could have ever hoped, considering they were taken from the window of a moring car. Hooray for the crappy little Coolpix!

*Waikato of a hundred taniwha, a taniwha on each bend//Waikato of a hundred chiefs, a chief on each bend