The Evocative Soul of Bologna

Evocative – bringing strong images, feelings or memories to mind. Bologna is not a tourist city, which makes it ideal to visit. It’s the gastronomic capital of Italy, entirely walkable, and full of hidden treasures. In a little over two weeks there in spring 2015, I barely scratched the surface.

I wasn’t planning to produce an exhibit, but I did want a photographic challenge. Sometimes the best way to do that is to find a self-limiting constraint. In his book The iPhone Photographer, Michael Fagans talked about the app Hipstamatic that I used to use but had forgotten about. Hipstamatic enables one to use different films, lenses, and effects as if shooting real film, “messing up” by opening the camera back, for example, or double exposing, or using instant cameras with all the unpredictability. It’s fun but also creative in allowing the photographer to introduce artistic elements with color and tone, for example, thereby evoking different feelings. I thought, there it is – my constraint for Bologna. I’ll try to capture the mood of the city with my iPhone. I’ll look for the soul of the city, the unexpected, ephemeral as it may be.

The Bologna I captured is as I saw it but of course there are as many Bolognas as there are seasons of the year, times of day, and states of mind.  I intend to capture more in future visits.

 These photos were shown at Metro Galleries in Bakersfield CA in an exhibit titled The Evocative Soul of Bologna. They are all 8”x8” mounted in black metal float frames, bringing the dimension to 9 1/2” x 9 1/2”.