I’ve considered moving abroad after I graduate from Davidson, and have spent time in undergrad exploring different cities I could see myself inhabiting, from Berlin to Amsterdam. Last semester, I had the privilege of studying abroad with Temple University Rome in Italy. The experience was unlike anything I could have imagined it to be. Rome was beautiful externally, as many even call it an open air museum, but also held some of its greatest treasures on the insides of its museums and galleries. Exposure to art, both ancient and contemporary, was constantly available to me – and yet, in a city so often romanticized, there was still an underbelly that tourists’ photographs couldn’t depict – overtourism, poverty, and housing crises, among others. I recognize that living in Rome was a completely different thing from just visiting it, and even my way of living in Rome was rather different than people who had been here all their lives. Upon completing my semester abroad and returning to the United States, I’ve been reflecting on the ways in which Rome has been reproduced in popular media. One such piece in our galleries, Rome, from RISD Portfolio by Marc Blandori, has captured my attention on that front, a photograph which I believe depicts how Rome feels on the ground, not just in postcards.
The photograph, a gelatin silver print mounted on drawing board, depicts a figure standing in the middle of a crosswalk holding a mirror. The crosswalk is painted over a floor of distinctly European cobblestones; in the mirror, both the crosswalk and another figure’s shoes walking are presented, and align with the crosswalk depicted outside of the mirror. In the background are the pillars of large buildings and additional figures. The absence of color due to the black-and-white nature of the photograph allows one to focus on the textures of it instead – the white paint layering over cobblestones, the black void in the chest of the figure’s shirt. The artist, Marc Blandori, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to become a cinematographer in New York.
For me, this photograph represents the strange dichotomy present in Rome today – that this city is made up of parts ancient and contemporary, that it must play both roles. I believe focusing on the more modern moments of Rome’s being – in this case, a crosswalk haphazardly painted over olden cobblestone streets – we establish the city as a living one, not just a place of history. There is an obsession in popular media with Rome’s past, of going and seeing the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum – yet many tourists cannot acknowledge, too, that this is a contemporary city, one in which locals still live, one in which all the ails of modern society still do affect one’s life. After my time in Rome, I have recognized that the city contains much more than picture-perfect postcards, and that’s what this photograph captures.
— Courtney Lassiter ’27