Plus X and a Mamiya 7II in Venice

A post today from Edmakesfilms inspired me to dig into my old files. These shots from a hurried trip in the early 2000’s were shot on Kodak Plus X and my long gone lamented Mamiya 7 II system.

I was shooting for my job at a large regional magazine based in the American South. We were doing a story on the Atlanta Ski Club, the country’s largest. The writer Mark and I flew with the club to Italy and on to Cortina d’Ampezzo . After a few very cold days photographing their activities we took a break and headed northeast to Trieste where Mark was born. Mark wanted to see the house his family lived in back then.  At that time Mark’s father was the commander at a UN military base. The post-war Treaty of Peace with Italy created the Free Territory of Trieste, a new independent and sovereign State under a provisional Government and under the direct responsibility of the United Nations Security Council. According to the protocol, when the Italian peace treaty came into force, the United Kingdom, the United States and Yugoslavia were each authorized to station 5,000 troops in the Free Territory of Trieste. All that kind of explains how Mark came to be born there. 

Our drive took us by Venice so we stopped overnight to see the city. But by the time we got there it was already late afternoon. Mark crashed in our hotel room but I was entirely too jazzed up to sit still. I grabbed the Mamiya and ran out of the hotel and into the cold hard light of a 30 degree day with some 3 hours of daylight left. I ran around the city with no plan, no idea, no clue where I was half the time. I shot till dusk. At that point, and without a tripod, it was just too dark with the Plus X I had in hand. 

I went back to the hotel room, waking Mark when I came in. He looked up at me with a odd expression and asked what happened to me. I probably looked like I was drunk. I’d just experienced a whirlwind of a visual fantasy. Mark said it looked like I had just had a ‘photogasm’. I believe he was right.

We hit the road to Trieste early the next morning. We found our way to a local municipal office where an official volunteered to take us to the very house Mark’s family lived in. Unfortunately we didn’t speak the same language. I believe he spoke a Slovenian dialect. But we managed. He did find the house where an older Italian couple lived now. They didn’t speak Slovenian but Mark spoke a little Italian. The couple seemed thrilled when they realized why we were there. We were invited to sit at their kitchen table with the municipal official. The older mans wife shuffled out of the room only to return a little while later with a decorative tray. On the tray were small glasses and a dusty never-opened bottle of Johnny Walker Black. I imagine the bottle sitting in their cabinet for years and years waiting for a ‘special moment’. Apparently we were that moment. The wife set it before us and sat in a chair nearby but not at the table with us. We enjoyed the whisky and laughed, sharing stories in three languages.

What a wonderful trip and such great memories. I don’t know what to say about the Mamiya 7. Incredible camera for travel. Small but with beautiful 6X7 negatives. Tiny but brilliant lenses. When I shot slide film with it the results looked like stained glass windows.  The only sadness is that after moving to digital and leaving the magazine I wasn’t shooting the Mamiya any more. It sat in a case on a shelf for a few years before I sold off the two bodies and four lenses. Sold off for pennies. Now I couldn’t afford to buy it all back it’s become so expensive.

A long time friend and fellow photographer made beautiful darkroom prints from many of my negatives from the shoot. She’s a master printer and toned them beautifully. They are well framed and form a collection in the dining room of our home. I scanned the negatives for this with my Canon camera. I tried to tone them similar to what she did with chemicals. I did not achieve the rich today beauty and depth she did.

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