a lot of people avoid firenze out of season — it’s damp in winter, quite cold, often rainy. the narrow streets with their overhanging eaves dripping rainwater, take on a brooding, melancholy demeanour, in very stark contrast to the sweating heat of summer, ice cream guzzling school trips, and the glittering chiaroscuro of sunlight falling sharply between the walls of palazzi. this picture was taken about ten years ago, when it was still permitted to take photographs from within the uffizi gallery (or perhaps when i was still brave enough to flout rules about taking pictures on private property). it’s a popular view — one which clearly shows the private corridor which gave access from the uffizi to the pitti palace over the river, allowing the medici, and other nobles to avoid the common populace. so — an objectification of the emergent class divisions of the middle ages — the dynamo of the renaissance. pretty. the ruling class above, the shops of the traders perched over the arno, the common herd on the streets below.

for the technically-minded, this is not a digital image. it was taken from a 35mm film scan.

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everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.

jean baudrillard

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