We have visited Rome many times, as you can see from my blog posts here, here and here, but never in May. As soon as we stepped out into the streets, I sensed immediately what made May different. Jasmine! It was everywhere, spilling over doors and gates, filling the air with its perfume. So it felt completely fitting that our first stop was Palazzo Massimo, to see the room of garden frescoes from Livia’s villa. It is one of our favourite haunts in Rome. The paintings are astonishingly well preserved, the colours so vivid that you can almost hear the birds calling from the trees. Virginia Woolf (who visited Rome in 1927, and whose book “Mrs Dalloway” celebrates its centenary this year) wrote about a woman needing a room of her own. Livia, the wife of Emperor Augustus, had this one built around 30-20BC — a room filled with painted flowers, fruit trees and imagined birdsong. A space outside time, quiet and alive, it survives as an unusual artefact from an era when women were largely invisible. I like to think that Livia used it as a room of her own, and I am sure Virginia Woolf would have loved it as much as I do, especially as she enjoyed flowers and gardens.

We had a busy itinerary, packed with old favourite destinations as well as new places, and I snapped photos as we walked through the city. Three of us were taking photos on film cameras, while our son’s girlfriend took photos on a small digital camera. (This is what the kids are doing these days, it seems: using old digital cameras from the 2000s, with the flash turned on, for a retro snapshot feel without having to use film.) She is a fast learner with a wicked sense of humour. Whenever I raised my camera, she would say, I want to see what you are seeing. So here’s what I saw.

We were organised weeks before we travelled and managed to score some tickets for the Caravaggio exhibition. We all appreciated it for different reasons, from the myths and the lighting to the sheer drama of it all.

I was also experimenting with the Slow Shutter app, as part of a group project (see Deirdre’s post), and this added an entirely different way of seeing the city. Familiar landmarks became fluid and strange, taking on new shapes and moods, a haunted vision of the city. It made me think of “A Room of One’s Own” — how freedom and creativity so often require just a small shift in perspective. Using Slow Shutter also helped obscure the identities of passers-by (which you know I prefer to do in street photography) and gave me instant feedback as I played with double exposures and long shutter speeds. I especially loved using it at night, a time when I do not usually take pictures, and which turned out to be when Rome revealed a more ghostly side of itself.

What struck me most about this trip to Rome was how my approach to photography has changed on every visit. Photography slows you down. It teaches you to look again, and then again. Rome is a city of endless layers and fragments, and with a camera in hand you begin to notice the way light falls on ruins, or how jasmine spills across a doorway you had never seen before. As I walked and watched and waited for the right moment to press the shutter, I thought of Woolf’s character Mrs Dalloway walking through a city. A quiet pause within the rhythm of the day. To frame and reframe. To think through looking.

kirstin