The Island when it's not THE island- The (Snowless) Winter Edition

I spent the whole winter waiting patiently. It will come, yes it will. The snow. There'll be one snow that lasts for more than a day, covers more than a centimetre of ground. And then we will go to take the "Sziget in winter" white, fluffy shots. Well, that snow didn't come, so we had no choice but to trudge onto the island on a rather muddy February day. Let's say that the feeling of nothing was particularly intense. A nothing occasionally interrupted by a wallet sized dog, an islet of snowdrops, the roar of a largish Emirates jet. Which is of course very much nothing compared to how the main stage roars on a lovely summer's night. The good thing is, that summer's night is now less than half a year away.

And on the up side, I got to try my hand at sophisticated pictures of nothing (that fetch millions at auctions if not taken by me). A few more snowless winters and I'll be the mistress of abstract mudtracks.

Let There Be Light!

I can't really hold it against winter that it's cold, I actually sometimes wish we had a tad colder winters than the past few ones, but the lack of light gets me. Wake up in the dark, trudge to work in the dark, go home in the dark. Pretend it's not dark and go out in the evening. So now finally there's proper light in the morning. And that makes me even happier than a Pharrell song.

Torino My Love

Sunday morning in Turin, and I was on a casual stroll on the foggy banks of the Po, when a little old lady with the compulsory little dog swaddled in a tiny jacket walks up to me. Mind you, in Italy even the dogs wear really thick jackets in what could only be indulgently called cold weather. For most Scandinavia, it would probably be full blown spring. So she sees my camera and expresses her regret that I should be here in such bad weather. While I am impressed by her concern, I can only smile. This is not bad weather- it’s wonderful weather. The fog floats over the river, people come running or walking their packaged pets, and there’s a hill to the other side of the river. Well, I know this place. It’s home.

Of course I’ve never lived in Turin, but it’s one of the few cities where I imagine myself staying for a longer time and enjoying it. It’s not only the familiar setting of a city on a fully fledged river- it’s also that sensation, getting ever rarer, that this place has not yet been totally vampirized by hoards of tourists holding the Mole Antonelliana between their fingers for a silly shot. So instead of a postcard perfect sunny morning, give me the fog, and the satisfaction of having actually felt something of the essence of a place, not just seen the surface of it.