Italian Pixies

The gondoliers coasted by the window as if put there by an Italian saint. I’d been poking around a dank and dark garage of sorts, exploring alone on a side street in Venice, a city with only side streets and sloshy waterways. The iron window frame caught my eye, at first. The shutters. The light. That slivered Vermeer-like view of the world. The open invitation of sky. The vignette looked inky and sharp. Measuring the light was tricky fun to figure out. 

And, then, before you could say, Bellissima, two gondoliers appeared. They wore classic Venetian shirts and slid into the frame with ease. As one of my favorite teachers, Cig Harvey, used to say in the darkroom on a particularly good day...ahh, the pixies were with you. Well, the pixies were alive and sparkling the split second that those men floated into the frame, landing dead center.

Venice, Italy