Trips: Napoli and surroundings
Holiday pictures in Napoli from the beginning of 2024
Visiting a new place is the best excuse to explore new angles and frames, and generally enjoy the world with fresh eyes. The only limit when it comes to analogue photography is in the literal number of frames you’ve decided to take with you.
In fact, Polaroid film in good conditions isn’t easy to find:
it needs to be less than 1 year old since production, otherwise its chemicals are considered ‘expired’
it needs to be stored in a fridge, conditions with which many re-seller don’t comply.
and it shouldn’t pass through a TSA scanner, which ruins the chemicals.
In my experience with the Madrid airport, the security personnel don’t want to make exceptions for such nonsesense (which is fair enough): they insist to pass it through the damaging x-rays. So to avoid that, I’ve been sending my film ahead of me to the places I travel to (in this case, to the Airbnb host who was kind enough to receive it).
This gives me a strict limit of film I have to use (and use it all) during my trip, which is a very interesting limitation to work with.
I’ve used up about an entire pack of 8 polaroids in Orto Botanico di Napoli, a serene oasis of a botanical garden right in the bustling city of Napoli.
Walking on the streets of the ancient city of Pompeii is a fascinating experience that makes you question our civilisation’s place in the bigger picture, and it’s ephemerality in the face natural disasters.
Every major Italian city has one (or more) of these arched glass-covered markets, such as Galleria Umberto I, and it’s always such a magical place in term of light and architecture.
We took a ferry to the Island of Ischia for a day trip to experience its famous thermal waters in the best way possible: right on one of the island’s public beaches - Baia di Sorgeto.
As a first timer in a beach with natural thermal activity, I was surprised by the texture of this phenomenon - the heat bursts through little crevasses in the rocks suddenly and inconsistently.
Napoli is a non-stop, bustling, rushing, exciting place, and thus it’s so precious to find a moment of respite in a green calm place such as Capodimonte park.
On working under quantity limits
In the age of digital photography, the strict limit that the analogue medium imposes on the number of pictures you can take is a much needed booster for creativity.
In total, I had 48 frames with me in Napoli during a week-long trip, and it felt both too much and too little. On one hand, in a new place, everything looks photo-worthy, but I also had to keep some shots for the following days. And on the other hand, 6-7 pictures per day is a lot more than what I’d normally take if I’m ‘at home’. But this is a limitation that has pushed me to explore new angles and subjects, while also carefully choosing what’s worth immortalizing.