During these days of uncertainty, fear, frustration and fatigue, it's often the little things that bring a smile to our faces... In this case, I was sitting down for a midday snack, mindlessly peeling a clementine as I was tuning into a YouTube travel video, when I looked down and saw I had peeled the skin into a perfectly beautiful star.

Look for the little things and build from there.

Hoping you are all well...

--Jerry Finzi

Many of us who love Italy have probably seen this photo many times... "The American Girl in Italy" by Ruth Orkin. Taken in 1951, it appears to be a candid shot of a pretty girl being taunted with catcalls as she walks down a street in Florence, perpetuating the stereotype of the Italian sexist male wolf and the female as an object. Still others today (including the object of the photo, American art student and model, Jinkx Allen) claim it illustrates female empowerment. Most think of it as a shot in the style of Cartier-Bresson or Brassai or even André Kertész.

Being a professional photographer my entire life, I feel obliged to give my strong opinions on this image...

The young woman in the photo is 23 year old Jinx Allen (aka Ninalee Craig in her later life). Allen had done the unthinkable in the early 1950s--quitting her job and boarding a ship to Europe with her third class ticket, and traveling to France, Spain and Italy unaccompanied. During her travels she met 29 year old photographer, Ruth Orkin.

Orkin was born the daughter of Hollywood silent film star and led a fairly privileged life early on.  She had dreams of becoming a cinematographer, which never panned out. In 1943 she attempted to start a career in New York as a photojournalist, but instead became a nightclub photographer, shooting pics of luminaries out on the town. Because of her growing portfolio of celebrities, she started doing assignments for Ladies Home Journal, Look and the New York Times. Most of her work was following celebrities around with a camera and the occasional portrait.

While in Italy, she met Craig and began taking shots of her in various, planned scenarios on the streets of Florence. The working concept for Orkin's shoot was "Don't Be Afraid to Travel Alone", a visual story of a woman traveling alone in Italy. She went into the shoot planning the shots along the way.

Although Craig claimed that this was not a staged photo, in a 2011 interview with TODAY she also admits they were just "horsing around" (honest photojournalists of the day didn't horse around to get shots). She also said that "...Ruth Orkin was wise enough to ask me to turn around and go back and repeat the walk", adding that there were only two shots taken of the famous scene.

Think about this a second... Orkin's model was told to walk through the men hanging out on the corner--a six foot tall, beautiful American girl dressed stylishly struts through the scene. After her first shot, Orkin told Craig to do it again. Now, these guys would really get into the scene, checking out and making comments (more than likely, in the poetic style of the Italian male --"Che bellissima!" as she sashayed, runway style, flaunting herself a second time.

This is not photojournalism, where a photographer blends into the scene, often with small 35mm camera held discretely, waiting for the reality of the street to form into the perfect moment. That moment is not planned.

Walking down the streets of any big city in the world, you'll more than likely come across functional, but elaborately designed manhole covers. But in Italy, such beautiful practicality has been going on for a very lone time... even back to the time of ancient Rome. In fact, many claim that our GVI mascot, La Bocca della Verita was once a large manhole cover.

Enjoy the variety in this collection, and don't forget to look down once in a while while walking through Italian cities.
--Jerry Finzi

To me, the old, weathered doors in Italy are a work of art in and of themselves. Their textures of aged wood, peeling paint and ancient, blacksmith forged hardware are wonderful subjects for my own photography.

But in the small mountainside village of Staiti in the Aspromonte National Park in Calabria there are doors that boast both colors and colorful words. They were painted by a Staitese artist, Teresa Gandini, with the help of local boys. Gandini is a well known artist in the area who usually paints local scenes of rustic architecture, gardens and floral settings. But in this case, not only her images, but also the words she paints on the doors are what transforms them doors into sheer architectural poetry.

They could very well be the doors to visitors' souls...

--Jerry Finzi

First of all, not all beaches in Italy even have sand to build Castelli di Sabbia (sandcastles). Secondly, even if you were on an Italian beach with lots of fine sand and started to build a sandcastle with your child, more than likely a group of Italian children would gather around, never having seen anyone do such a thing. Thirdly, if you are on a beach like Eraclea (near Venice), the bagnino (lifeguard) would come over to stop you and give you a fine. It's apparently illegal, by mayoral degree, to build sandcastles as they block the public access.

Curiously, there are still some very large sandcastle competitions all over Italy during the summer months... one of the most prestigious being on the lido in Jesolo, just east of Venice, another in the seaside town of Cervia near Ravenna, and yet one more in Alessio on the Italian Riviera west of Genoa. Another unexpected one is on Easy Living's Urban Beach on the banks of the Arno River in Florence, a hipster beach bar.

--GVI

Recently, after the curators of the Palazzo Pitti ordered a routine cleaning and inspection of Raphael's La Donna Velata (the Veiled Woman), they discovered some significant and off-putting under-painting through the use of x-rays and ultraviolet techniques.

Amazed at what they found--a bizarre portrait of a bearded Michelangelo, they began to come up with a reason for this horrific image...

As many historians will tell you, Michelangelo and Raphael had a combative relationship and worked on different parts of the Vatican at the same time. As is well documented, Raphael painted the frescoes on the walls and ceiling of the Pope’s private library while Michelangelo was (as Raphael saw it) "laying down on the job" while painting the Sistine chapel ceiling. Raphael procured a key to the Sistine Chapel and had his spy secretly sneak in to check out Michelangelo’s progress. At times, Raphael himself would spy on the Master and record every detail of what he saw in his Eidetic memory.

Michelangelo later accused Raphael of plagiarism and claimed "everything he knew about art he got from me." Michelangelo hated Raphael and spread nasty rumors about him. The two were bitter rivals to the end.

With this new discovery, art experts now theorize that Raphael hatched his plan to get back at him... to paint the most ugly and grotesque portrait of a bearded Michelangelo underneath one of his own masterpieces, the Veiled Woman, knowing full well that someday, somehow, in the distant future, art historians would uncover his monumental joke upon the Master... once and for all times, shaming Michelangelo (who was rumored to be gay) as a cross-dressing, bambolina-hugging monstrosity--even if the shaming occurred after they were both in their graves.

--Jerry Finzi