My favorite picture I have taken - The Vucciria.
In Palermo, the outdoor Vucciria Market was immortalized by artist Renato Guttuso, one of the most famous Italian painters of the 20th Century. His painting, La Vucciria (1974) has become an icon of Sicily as a whole, with its vivid depiction of a bustling market filled with all kinds of goods and people from all walks of life.
Renato Guttuso's La Vucciria (1974).
Having heard of the market and having seen this painting, I was eager to make a stop there during our trip today to Palermo. We arrived in the late afternoon, just as the alleys were beginning to grow dark and the market was coming to life under a thousand illuminated light bulbs.
We found this street vendor who had the best fruit shop in the market, and he spent 20 minutes with us, handpicking oranges and strawberries. As we started to walk away, I saw his face illuminated in the light, and quickly snapped a picture I knew might be the closest thing to a "Time Magazine" photo-journalism shot I could ever capture.
If you look really close, you can see the light twinkling in his eye, and one can only guess the thoughts in his head. The dramatic lighting of his face - coming from a single age-old light bulb - could not be more perfect, as well as the gritty background of this Palermo alley.
Anyways, I know I share a bunch of my photos on this blog, however of all of them, this is my favorite because it truly captures the human spirit and emotion of the market in a way that words never could... and perhaps could be the 21st century equivalent of a 35 year old painting...
~ J. Twice
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