Thursday, March 31, 2016
Charles H. Traub | Dolce Via
Thursday, March 31, 2016Photographer, Charles H. Traub turns to the streets and byways of Italy– from Milan to Marsala, collating his American gaze photographic wor...
Photographer, Charles H. Traub turns to the streets and byways of Italy– from Milan to Marsala, collating his American gaze photographic work in the book 'Dolce Via'. Traub's brillians blues, reds and yellows accent the baroque pusturing and gestures of strangers and ordinary people.
This is perhaps a melodramatic segue way into a discussion of Dolce Via, a gorgeous collection by New York-based photographer Charles H. Traub of photos taken during his summer visits to Italy in the early 1980s. Yet there is a common thread to be found in both Traub’s and Forster’s work, in which the clichés of an outsider’s perspective on Italy are scythed through with a vivid swipe of the red blooded reality of a city running at full speed, its people living their lives in respectful indifference to the antiquities that surround them. So often in the traditional portrayals of the likes of Rome, Naples and Florence, we find the day-to-day life of the city side-lined as we stand in thrall to its past; the lusts, lights and shades of its present ignored in favour of ancient gods, moss strewn stones and exquisite ceilings lit up by the popping flashes of the tourist's camera. Not so in Dolce Via. Here it is the antiquities who are side-lined, left to bear witness to the life of the city that rolls by in waves of vibrant colour, where the emotions of Rome are found etched on skin not marble.
This is perhaps a melodramatic segue way into a discussion of Dolce Via, a gorgeous collection by New York-based photographer Charles H. Traub of photos taken during his summer visits to Italy in the early 1980s. Yet there is a common thread to be found in both Traub’s and Forster’s work, in which the clichés of an outsider’s perspective on Italy are scythed through with a vivid swipe of the red blooded reality of a city running at full speed, its people living their lives in respectful indifference to the antiquities that surround them. So often in the traditional portrayals of the likes of Rome, Naples and Florence, we find the day-to-day life of the city side-lined as we stand in thrall to its past; the lusts, lights and shades of its present ignored in favour of ancient gods, moss strewn stones and exquisite ceilings lit up by the popping flashes of the tourist's camera. Not so in Dolce Via. Here it is the antiquities who are side-lined, left to bear witness to the life of the city that rolls by in waves of vibrant colour, where the emotions of Rome are found etched on skin not marble.
