Palermo

Today I visited the first ever solo photography expo in Antwerp of a long time friend, Bart Van Den Broeck. Bart used to live the life of a yuppie in his 20ies and 30ies, as a financial manager in one of the leading Port of Antwerp "Naties", but one day he decided he wanted to do things he really loved to do, and this for the rest of his life. Few of us are brave enough to have the courage and do just that. I envy him...

One of the things that turn Bart on is top quality photography. In his mid-thirties, wholeheartedly encouraged in this endeavor by his lovely wife Herma, he thus went to study Professional Photography at the Academy in Antwerp for many years (five or six I think) and with a lot of humility he started creating portfolios during small trips not far from the Metropole. This slowly has grown to some trips to the South of Europe and this expo is about his view of Palermo, Sicily (where else?).

With the colors and realism of Martin Parr, capturing the moment like Bresson and Doisneau, Bart is showing his talents in a subtle but solid manner. His composition is superb, his 36x24 mm film Leica shooting reveals a subtle vignetting that creates a dramatic and extremely powerful focus on his subjects. His characters, so real and natural, look like they have been casted by Fellini himself. The whole sphere is so Mediteranean... Sicily is kind of wild landscape... the blue is lot more ruthless and obsessive than what we witness under the Aegean sun and locals look physically much harder than their Greek siblings... Only Sicilians could have become the ruthless Mafiosi as we know them. Looking at their faces you can see what I mean. And in the middle of all this you see the omnipresent church with two posing priests, May confirmation ceremonies of 12 year olds and subsequent parties with liters of Barolo wine, mama Miracolli's pasta and towers of gelati.. During just a week's stay in Palermo and with more than 500 shots taken, Bart really seems to have crowled under their Italian skin. Pictures taken with his beloved Leica M5 on Fujichrome and subsequently digitized for printing on paper.

Italians, expecially coming from the South will really appreciate the compositions and will inevitably feel like buying part or the entire collection.

The gallery is just opposite the Oudaan parking in the center of the city at the back of a wine commerce shop at nr 33 of the Everdijstraat. Certainly worth a visit.

It's interesting to note that before visiting the expo, we went, Rita and I, for lunch at a low end tourist Pizzeria "Da Giovanni" on both sides of the street leading from the Groenplaats to the Cathedral of Antwerp. One of Giovanni's shops is a Pizzeria, the other is a Ristorante; by positioning them on both sides of the same street Giovanni manages to capture a huge clientéle among tourists passers by, just like Trojans imposing duties on ships sailing thru the pass of Dardanelia...

As we entered Da Giovanni's, the cappo himself, looking a lot like a rough character from Naples, changing shirts and undershirts every 30 minutes or so, sweating behind the pizza bench, welcomed us with a top decibel loud "Bongiorno Dottore!". I thought: "how could he tell? Am I carrying a Dottore sign on my forehead for crying out loud?".

The visit to Da Giovanni's was meant as a warming up to get to the Palermo expo afterwards... I love Italian restaurants... they've always got hundreds of low pay Italian youths as waiters who make so much noise shouting, singing and bringing the wrong orders or even forgetting to deliver them but... not to bill them... So, when I asked for a capuccino coffee I got something back like "sorry the macchina is kapoet" and therefore I ordered a normal coffee instead. A quarter later, not having received any coffee we asked for the bill... bill delivered and paid and while waiting for the heavy rain to stop before leaving, a lovely waitress finds out that they billed me 2.25 euros for an espresso that they never served me... apologizing she came by with a good fresh cup of coffie and extra cookies and millions of excuses... Oh the spaghetti's... they are such a charmful gang... As I was watching them I was thinking..."how are Italian restaurants different than any other?"... "Eureka! Waiter staff are much more noisy than their own clientéle... that really must be it!"