Patti Smith Exhibition and Thoughts on Photography
Saturday I visited Parma, a beautiful little city in Emilia Romagna. One of the things I wanted to see was the exhibition with pictures taken by Patti Smith.
Even the building was amazing, lots of white space and marble surfaces. There weren’t so many people around so it was almost like a private visit and for this kind of exhibition it was just perfect.
I read M Train, the latest book written by Patti Smith, in which there are some pictures that where also in the exhibition, so I knew what to expect. But it all was so inspiring.
She takes lots of “simple pictures” (forgive me this therm please, “simple” isn’t the right word, but I don’t have any other yet); some of them are daily life pictures, snapshots of little moments.
They made me think about what I like to photograph the most: the little things and the simple moments that make up my daily life.
If you are following me on Instagram, on @unpeusauvage or @kissing.is.chaos, you might have already read that lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Instagram and how I’m relating to it.
I love this platform, all the amazing creatives that it allows me to know and follow; I love the pictures that the people share, all the corners of the world I can see and I want to add to my bucket list of places to visit in my life.
But, there is always a but, me and Instagram don’t understand each other lately. I won’t tell you all the boring things related to the algorithm (you can read many more detailed articles and blog posts written by more knowledgeable people than me), or about how Instagram is impacting business accounts; here I want to talk about my experience and my feelings.
After the exhibition I walked around the city and I was taking pictures of things that caught my eyes, I was trying not to follow dangerous trains of thoughts like “will this detail go well on my Instagram account?”, “if I share this landscape, will I lose followers?”. These are the kind of thoughts that I’m trying to avoid, I want to enjoy once more using this social media, I want to share the things that make up my life (a kind of simple and maybe sometime boring life, made of knitting, tea and coffee, books, plants and little travels).
I want to enjoy taking pictures. Sometimes I need to take more “studied” pictures to use in my shop and that’s totally OK, of course, and I also love to create a good old flat lay or a mood board, but they always tell a story or a part of my story as a creator and all the other sides that make me as a person.
