I really like this challenge that popped up on my WordPress feed, from The Daily Post. It is to share a photo with a window, because a window can “tell you about where you are – and where you’re not – and mark a particular moment in time…Windows…can stir up memories and big ideas.”
This is a picture I took in 1999. It’s from a window in the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, and I took it the spring that I backpacked around the UK and Europe. I remember being astonished by the countries I saw while travelling, but especially Rome. Everywhere you go in Rome, there are ancient ruins just sitting there. It’s incredible. I took many, many pictures of the Colosseum that day, and when I was leaving and looked out this particular window, I just had to take another. To me, “framing” the scene outside of a street filled with remnants of the distant past, with a window, was like peering out a window to the days of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. It was presenting another period in time. And it was capturing what defined Italy to me.
At the time, I was young (24), and I was “educated” (I had graduated from university the year before), but I did not know nearly as much about the world – including historical events and figures – as I do now. I wish I had because everything would have meant so much more. Though the picture was taken almost 15 years ago, the person behind the camera is still the same in many ways: a lover of history and learning (one reason I became a teacher); someone who likes to “document” her life with pictures (I STILL use photo albums – the ones you can actually touch and turn the pages of – and have hundreds upon hundreds of pictures, even from the last few years); and someone who likes to travel and see the world (though I’m a little bit of a scaredy-cat in my “old”er age).
Now I feel an urge to go eat pizza and gelato…
