I took this shot on the famous Ponte Vecchio in Florence in 2020, during the second lockdown in early November. It was a much less tense lockdown than the first must've been. I had spent that one in London, which was strange enough but here given the amount of tourists who normally reach the city during a year, this was very strange I imagine. Empty piazzas and all the historical pieces of art sitting within their own spaces for once. When I arrived in September that year, Tuscany had recovered a portion of the tourism, there were restrictions and masks to be worn in certain places but it was still filled to a degree with visitors, people trying to make the ordinary life again after the surreal beginning to the year. The Americans and Asians were not really present, which was a large portion of the usual tourist market, but still people were grateful that within Europe we were travelling again. We were doing okay it seemed. Buskers played on the Ponte Vecchio in the evenings, people bought shoes and ice cream and sat on the walls along the river eating panini. It was very nice actually, a feeling of breath and air, even behind the masks filled the days. Then just as things were starting to feel almost normal, the news came, it began as whispers, then newspaper headlines and before long we were back in a second lockdown. The tourists left and again the city was quiet. I stayed as I was working on a project regarding the pandemic. I had my months in London watching the world from that position so this was more interesting to me. I lived around the corner from the Ponte Vecchio so I had walks every evening around the river and over the bridges. The sunsets were quite beautiful most nights, they never disappointed, even those which were subtle and not seemingly spectacular, had its own level of beauty. It is an interesting moment of the day, as the day begins to end, the sun makes way for the moon as they share the time on earth like tag. When people ask me where to go for the sunset, I always tell them, The Ponte Vecchio. There are other places, very nice too but this one to me is like your own personal platform and during the lockdowns it often was for me. This particular day during my sunset walk I saw this man standing alone there and I loved this scene, he was silently still, just absorbing it. The vanilla sky of this sunset was not the most spectacular, I have seen some spectacular skies here, some I could barely believe but this one was soothing and almost like a personal vision, no one elses but his. Many beautiful things were viewed in silence during those days and all the while the bells would ring out from the Duomo perfectly timed and each day was separated by these things, separated and celebrated. Many things are beautiful about Florence, but the positioning of things, the organisation of them in accordance with nature is what I love the most.
How we end is how we begin.