Somewhere I have never travelled..

…Gladly beyond any experience.

I have recently started to suffer with insomnia, rarely sleeping more than a few hours a night. One of my readers (hello Kenneth!) suggested imagining a journey to a place I have visited or would like to visit as a way of drifting off. And so I find myself in those hollow morning hours (or The Hour of the Wolf as Ingmar Bergman so brilliantly put it) travelling to places I know and love and also those imaginary places of the past which no longer exist or the cities of my mind where I have yet to venture.

I know them well. Those New York drugstores illuminated late at night on street corners where you can get a coffee or an ice cream sundae. There are the neon signs and theatres to discover on Times Square in the 1920s. There is always a film I want to see at the all night cinema and I can observe the lights of the apartments whizzing past from the Third Avenue El.

Esther Bubley

Nina Leen

In L.A, there are the dazzling headlights to admire from the hills, Schwab’s pharmacy, Romanoff’s and the Brown Derby if there’s a free table, palm lined avenues and morning walks in the grounds of the Griffith Observatory. Sometimes the Hollywood sign still reads Hollywoodland.

In San Francisco, I imagine the winding roads of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and those shadowy streets which Fred Lyon captured so brilliantly. Or hear the music in the jazz club visited by the ill-fated Edmund O’Brien in D.O.A.

Fred Lyon

And of course there is Paris in its greatest times. The hotel rooms you can live in so cheaply can be rather cold and dingy but you only need to walk a short distance to be enveloped in the warmth of the Flore or the Deux Magots as you sit and write on the first floor. There are books to borrow from the original Shakespeare and Company or something in French if you prefer from Adrienne Monier’s ‘La Maison des Amis des Livres’. And at night, there are strolls along the wide avenues, sometimes even climbing the steep flights of stairs up to Montmartre to observe the city at your feet, other times wandering by the Seine to admire the Pont Neuf.

James Joyce and Sylvia Beach

Roger Schall

André Kertész

In Venice, I think of the poet Joseph Brodsky who went there every year, generally in winter, arriving for the first time late at night by train, smoking and drinking coffee in the station cafe while he waited for someone to meet him, as described in his exquisite book ‘Watermark’.

Gianni Berengo Gardin, 1960

All of this makes me a hopeless romantic or a misguided nostalgic for something I never knew, depending on your viewpoint. The past was never this wonderful in reality, I’m fully aware. And yet as I drift between wakefulness and sleep, I think about the spaces we need to think and exist which are missing in today’s cities, how much has been lost and how much we need to save and feel glad that these invisible cities are still accessible to us in books, films, photos and perhaps even in dreams.

The Richfield Oil Tower, Los Angeles

Winter light

Photo taken on the train to London, 2009

December 1990: A blizzard swept over the country, bringing down all the power lines and, to my great delight, closing my school. The world became an enormous playground where everything was an adventure. The garden was a place for snowball fights and building the craziest snow creatures and people. When my father and I drove out (what madness without snow chains or winter tyres) to collect my half-brother who was studying at university nearby, we stocked up with vast quantities of chocolate and biscuits for worst case scenarios, although these mysteriously  disappeared without trace later. Every day, we all ventured out for long walks to buy fresh supplies as our freezer was out of use. But best of all were the evenings when we toasted bread in front of the fire, lit the candles and read to each other from our favourite books. A particular highlight was my mother reading the classic section from George and Wheedon Grossmith’s ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ where Mr. Pooter paints his bath red and ends up looking like Marat in David’s painting after using it. She could never quite forgive my father for falling asleep at that part or for him using the antique bed warmer. An heirloom which had been in the family for some time, it proved to be disastrous and leaked water everywhere, forcing my parents to spend a miserable night in the living room until their bed had dried. Utterly worthless, it hangs on the wall today, superfluous but never failing to make me smile each time I see it.

The sight of snow brings back memories of that winter and those quiet nights in the time before computers and smartphones. What that in mind, I’ve selected a few classic winter images which I hope you will enjoy, even if you consider snow more of a nuisance than a delight.

A streetcar stuck in New York after a freak snowstorm in 1936

Traffic chaos in New York, 1967

A man walking through Montmartre cemetery, 1946, by Ed Clark

The Eiffel Tower, 1948, by Dmitri Kessel

The Paris Opéra in 1942 by Robert Doisneau

On the Rhine, 1956, by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Washington Square, 1954, by André Kertész

Car tracks in the snow by Bramham Gardens, London, 1940s, by Eileen Agar

A snowball fight in Trafalgar Square, 1931

Venice, Part 3

The third and final part of my photo journal from Venice.

Vicenza

After heading down to St. Mark’s for my usual 7am photoshoot, I made my way to the railway station and took the train to Vicenza. It’s always a curious sensation seeing the lagoon alongside the railway lines and an even stranger sensation to leave the station and walk along normal tree lined streets with cars and buses. Vicenza is just 45 minutes away but feels like a different world. It was lovely to escape the crowds and walk leisurely through a regular city without worrying about getting lost or jostling with masses of tourists. Although I didn’t manage to see Palladio’s beautiful Villa Rotonda which lies a little outside the centre, there are many opportunities to admire his elegant facades and the highlight has to be a visit to his final project, the Teatro Olimpico which was not completed until after his death. Nothing from the outside can prepare you for the interior, particularly the extraordinary trompe-l’œil scenery which gives the illusion of great depth.

From Italy with love

Palladio

Last days in Venice

I miss the markets

The equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni outside Santi Giovanni e Paolo

The vast basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo

At the Peggy Guggenheim museum

Some photos from the Chanel exhibition at the Ca’ Pesaro, ‘The Woman Who Reads’. Highly recommended!

One last view and then it was time to leave. A blue morning to match my mood.

Venice, part 1

I left the apartment in San Polo in darkness each morning, scuttling past the street sweepers and those going to work to congregate with fellow photographers, armed with tripods, on the Rialto or Saint Mark’s Square, awaiting the moment when the sky would change from dark blue to an ever more intense pink, until finally the first golden rays touched the tops of the buildings. Walking back, I stopped to pick up fresh cornetti filled with jam, custard or almonds.

Returning to Venice after four years, I rediscovered old friends like the St. Mark’s Basilica, San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore, Caffè Florian, the Accademia Bridge, the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation and my favourite place, Isola San Michele, where Cypress trees stand like tapered church candles watching over the souls of Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Brodsky and my father, whose ashes my mother and I scattered on our trip there last time.

But there was also the joy of seeing new places like Burano, Torcello and a day spent in Vicenza.

I became so used to the movement of the the vaporetti that I can still feel the sensation of being on the water three days after getting back, as if I had really become part of the city. When the moment came to leave, tears rolled down my face without knowing the reason why – perhaps moved by so much beauty or perhaps overcome by the emotions and sadness of four years ago. It’s impossible to describe all that I saw and felt there so I’ll share some photos with you in the next few posts which I hope will bring back good memories or inspire you to take a trip to La Serenissima soon as well.

Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus – Peace be unto you, Mark, my evangelist. The Latin motto of Venice.

Il Ponte dei Sospiri

First breakfast

Dramatic view of San Giorgio Maggiore

One of the mosaics located on the exterior of St. Mark’s Basilica

At Florian’s

Tartufo and, in the background, cioccolata calda

When I left Florian’s, the musicians outside were playing Scott Joplin

Things I’d like to bring back

However much I like to complain that I was born in the wrong age, I can’t deny that there are certain aspects of modern life that I love like Instagram, blogging,  DVDs, digital photography and online shopping. Not everything was better in the past. But as a lover of vintage glamour and old films, you won’t be surprised to learn that there are quite a few things I regret the passing of and that I wouldn’t hesitate to bring back if I had the chance to. Here are some of them:

Double features

There’s just something really cool about hanging out all day at the cinema, seeing two films which complement each other. The Pan-Pacific cinema had a double feature, plus a Disney cartoon and the bargain matinee before 5pm cost just 20 cents. I defy you not to feel nostalgic!

B-movies

Which brings me to B-movies. There were films made on a shoestring budget, said to be of inferior quality and designed to fit into the second half of a double feature. Some of these weren’t great but a tiny budget meant directors had more freedom and needed to be even more creative to achieve certain effects. Think of the classic horror films Val Lewton produced like ‘Cat People’ (above) and ‘I Walked With A Zombie’ (and how much less interesting his A-pictures were), or ‘Stranger On The Third Floor’, considered today to be the first film noir or the brilliant ‘The Narrow Margin’ with Marie Windsor and Charles McGraw, below.

Comfort and glamour on air travel

I never knew the golden age of travel with comfortable seats, champagne, a huge amount of legroom and decent food on board. But when I had just moved abroad and started flying back to the UK, British Airways still had some tiny planes with single rows of window seats on either side, there were not yet any restrictions with liquids and you could check in less than an hour before take-off. It seems like a lifetime ago. Anyway, these vintage photos show that air travel could be luxurious – there was even a ladies’ powder room on board which should definitely be a standard feature on all flights.

Railway porters

Porter at a railway station, around 1960, by Bob Collins

Unlike air travel, for me travelling by train still retains a certain old fashioned glamour. Until you consider hauling heavy cases off and on, trying to get it into an already cramped compartment or struggling to lift it overhead. And then repeating all this when you change trains. To this day, it remains an inexplicable mystery to me why there are no porters to help you any more.

Will Hay and Moore Marriott in the classic ‘Oh, Mr Porter’.

Hats

I’m not a big hat wearer myself, for the simple reason that I’m not sure they really suit me, but I do love to see others wearing them, like in the photo above by Vivian Maier.Maybe if they made a comeback, I’d feel brave enough to wear them regularly too.

There is a great scene in Jacques Tati’s ‘Trafic’ where the woman gets out her hat instead of a spare tyre from the back of the car.

Railway dining cars

These featured in my post about vintage rail travel so it’s no surprise they’re here too. In the UK today, catering is limited to the buffet car if you’re lucky where you can get hot drinks in paper cups, sandwiches, chocolate and packets of crisps. If you’re unlucky, it’s a refreshment trolley which may or may not pass through the coach you’re sitting in. I love the idea of dressing nicely and having a decent meal at one of these tables while glancing out of the window at the countryside and towns whizzing by.

Pneumatic tube systems 

Truffaut Baisers volés chemin de la lettre pneumatique from Laboratoire des Hypothèses on Vimeo.

There’s a wonderful scene in François Truffaut’s ‘Baisers Volés’ where Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Antoine Doinel decides to send a pneu to the glamourous Fabienne Tabard, played by Delphine Seyrig. We see it through every step, from the posting of the letter and its insertion into the tube, the journey it makes through the network under the different parts of Paris and finally its arrival into the recipient’s beautiful hands. Of course, emails and SMS removed any need for this outdated technology but it’s hard to imagine them being used in a film to the same effect.

Writers with cats

So, this is neither new, nor original but I find these pictures charming and hope that dog lovers everywhere won’t feel too offended either. Photo above of Ernest Hemingway with his cat Cristobal.

Georges Perec

Patricia Highsmith

Mark Twain

Colette

Françoise Sagan

T.S Eliot

Edward Gorey

For Jan, author of the beautiful Clovis Sangrail blog, who introduced me to his work  – thank you!

Ray Bradbury

Elizabeth Jane Howard and Kingsley Amis

Raymond Chandler

Joseph Brodsky

Jean Cocteau

Hermann Hesse

I’m sorry if I’ve missed any of your favourite writers!