An author, a photograph.
I love american photography in the first decade of the last century.
Little historic preamble: photography started in france 1826 and it immediately takes a confrontation to painting.
The first photographers find hard to shape a proper creative autonomy, trying to create images that depict the aesthetics of paintings.
And this goes on for many years. While european painting techniques discovers and pushes boundaries to new limits, photography repeats academic formulas, producing aesthetics made of allegories, retouched images, fiction, blurred effects and flou. Finally photography crosses the ocean and finds ground in america to become an independent art form .
Finally the realism, the truth.
A group is born named f64, from the f-stop value of the diaphragm which makes everything perfectly focused, everything clear.
Therefore enough with pictorialism, enough false and fake photographs, modern photography is born, realistic and concrete.
Ansel adams, alfred stieglitz, all photographers part of the farm security administration, they are amongst the best american photographers of those times. But my best in my opinion is edward weston.
He’s born in illinois in 1886 and he starts taking photographs at the age of 16 with a camera that his father gave him.
Adventurous life, he travels towards mexico without any money, with a companion none other than the great tina modotti.
In his diary he tells that only by selling a few prints were they able to first buy the chemical products to photograph and, then, eventually, food to eat.
Not like the hot headed fashion photographers of 2007…
Weston’s whites and blacks give realism to nature and at the same time some sort of magic that is difficult they will ever be exceeded. The erotism in one of his peppers is much stronger than the most contemporary sexy calendar.
I have the luck to own one of his original photographs, taken in 1946, few years before he died: it is unbelievable.
All this admiration couldn’t not have gone anywhere but into something I am afraid it’ll ruin all this poetry: I admit it, I copied the Master.
I prostituted him for a silly and vulgar, even though quite nice, but respect to the paradigm, advertising campaign for shoes.
Here is http://www.benedusi.it/portfolio/?Form_Album=3&Form_Group=3&Form_Photo=495 my photograph, a copy of the photograph above by edward weston, american photographer born in 1886 and died in carmel, california, in 1958.
Edward, I am sorry.

The jews on a Saturday.
The catholics on a Sunday.
Benedusi celebrates on Monday, therefore today no post.

A friar, not so long ago:
When I was young, Ehi! I am young, when I was younger, I used to go to on holiday to capri with my friend A.
Do not think at luxurious holidays in multibillionaire villas or sipping on limoncello by the quisisana. My friend A. Was a friend of a friend named M., who was living in capri. So we used to go as guests of him. Guests I’d say it is an euphemism, in a way that from time to time we’d sleep here and there, guests of the friend of a friend of a friend… our little story takes place one night towards the end of August when the last place to sleep was on the boat of a friendofafriendofafriendofafriend, so we didn’t actually know who’s boat was it and we had a vague idea on what the boat was going to look like. We knew it had a sail and we had an approximate description of it. The night goes by in the caprian carousal, you eat you have fun and you drink.
Especially this last activity came to be very generous, under the caprian moon. Sometime in the night, or better, of the morning we leave capri town, which is not by the sea, to head towards the harbour in search of the boat we need to get to to get some rest.
The first problem was that the boat was not on the jetty, but it was moored in the middle of the harbour. We then take a small rowing boat and we row breathlessly into the fog looking for our bed for the night. “is it this one”, “no, don’t you remember, it’s this one”,”no, what are you talking about, it’s this one”… and so on for a while. At the end we pulled up to the one we both agreed it was the right one. We get on board, and by then all we were looking forward to was to fall into a hammock, we get closer to the cabin, and… we see two pairs of shoes outside. Fuck! We get scared, we panic a little thinking we got the wrong boat, or maybe the owner friendofafriendofafriend… changed his mind and got back on the boat, in short fuck do I know… we got a fright and slowly we got back on our rowing boat.
We row row row and we get back to the jetty at the harbour. The sun was rising and we were dead tired. We pull ourselves to the nearby beach, thinking we’d fall asleep in the sand. Sand? No sand on the beaches of capri, only rocks, uncomfortable and hard. We then found two tables in the middle of the beach who knows what they were there for. My friend A. and myself fall asleep on the tables as we were ready to sleep on needles. Finally we stretch and we pass out. Almost. More or less. After something that felt like two minutes but that in reality it was maximum two hours, we feel a tap on our shoulders, getting stronger, we were amidst bathers, tourists, kids playing ball, complete chaos. And the table was of someone selling I don’t know what. So they kick us out of our beds.
Broken, tired we drag ourselves up towards capri with the idea to check in at a hotel that for a few liras (liras!) they’d let you in for the swimming pool. The idea was to fall asleep on the deckchairs.
I remember arriving at the edge of the pool and the agonized bed extremely broken. Dressed as I was I collapse on what I was hoping to be my bed for the “night”.
In bed, finally!
We fall asleep as if we died immediately and equally immediate it started raining, actually pouring!
Dammit… dead, tortured by the events we pull ourselves away from the deckchairs and we enter the hotel. Tell you the truth at this point my memories fade in the tiresome fog… I only remember that in a deserted hotel we were, A. and myself, approached by a gay tourist. The idea that the gay tourist let us use his bed made us tolerate his pressing company.
I really don’t remember how it ended.
I mean, if the gay tourist gave us his bed, I should remember it, not much for the agonized bed but more for the high price it came with.
I will ask my friend A. and I will finish my story of summer 1986 in capri…

An author a book.
I am reading “sea of truth”, the last novel by Andrea de Carlo.
I think I have read all novels by andrea.
His first published book was cream train. Very dry writing, very lean.
Proceeds between highs and lows, sending some crap to the printers as well (my opinion is that uto and yucatan are part of this elected line up).
He reaches full maturity with “two of two”, for me definitely his best novel. I finished reading it during a job in the north of thailand, in chang mai to be precise. I was alone, lost and a little sad and I remember very well the night I read the last words “and it was strange to see one house where once there were two” (I am writing it off my memory, maybe it wasn’t exactly like that…) I was moved, I don’t want to exaggerate but think I even cried.
His next best novel in my opinion is “techniques of seduction”, which, besides the title, it is not a manual for seduction but a novel.
Also with this book I remember very well the ending. It ends with the word “this”.
Anyways I strongly advise to whoever hasn’t read it yet “two of two”. Story going along pre adolescent times, but what do you want me to say, I liked it a lot…
I once photographed andrea de carlo, it was for vogue germany.
Here is the photo: http://www.benedusi.it/portfolio/?Form_Album=1&Form_Group=2&Form_Photo=44
Once arrived on set, the restaurant giannino in milan (absolutely fantastic restaurant with an amazing open kitchen now flattened to build a residence for anorexic models) with a bag full of his books to sign them for me.
I was all excited like a take that fan.
I photographed him, we chatted a bit, then once I was also at his house. In short, I almost thought we became friends. Friend with my favourite writer. Then I met him once here in milan at an opening of an exhibition and he didn’t even acknowledge me.

I apologize but this post will be autoreferenced.
I would infact like to speak about the blog.
Of this strange thing that I haven’t understood yet what it is, if it is a diary for me to remember what I did and what I am doing, if it is the realm of which I am pince and lord, if it is a confessional, if it is a mirror like the ones that are in shops with conform sizes that elongate or thin out… well I don’t even know.
What I know though is that this blog has brought me some troubles, small chaos, misunderstandings, who tells me why did you write this, who tells me why didn’t you write that other…
There is who asks who am I, how am I and why do I write what I write.
Finally now I am and I want to officially tell you the truth.
The pure and simple truth.
I finally have the courage.
It is not me that writes on this blog.
Better it is me, now I am writing, but I am not settimio benedusi.
Settimio has given me the task to write for him.
He keeps me in a cellar inside a trunk covered in a latex sleeve, from time to time he lets me out and makes me write. Mi name is lorenzo abbondi.
Settimio lets me out and makes me write.
I live his life.
He tells me something and I romance it, make up, embroid it.
This is the reality.
I am not myself, or better I am not him but myself.
Him, me, us, you, all chaos.
Only one thing is definitely true: I exist, I am.

I want to try, it is not an easy thing, but to place a little objective sometimes it is needed.
It is very small and modest mine: write one thing everyday from today for a week.
I would have a lot of other things to do, maybe even nothing, which also takes its time, I mean do nothing…
Anyway I want to do it.
I don’t know if this incipit will count as homework done.
I could make it go my way, and wing it.
Either way I do whatever I like on this.
I could write dog dog dog dog, and nobody can say anything.
Not bad.
I will say something to myself though, hey settimio! What the hell are you writing?!?!
To write, and speak, and make sense of it all, interpret situations and reality. I feel it is important, this is maybe the base of rhetoric.
Rhetoric is important, it’s a good exercise on style and substance.
An example of rhetoric? Here:
A pupil ends his course on rhetoric under a famous teacher. The teacher, righteously, wants to be payed. So the pupil replies, showing off the beauty of rhetoric: “ dear teacher I won’t pay you. Infact if you taught me well rhetoric I will be able not to pay you. Instead if you didn’t teach me well rhetoric it is certainly not right that I pay you. Therefore I won’t pay you”
What would have the teacher replied if he really was a good professor in rhetoric?

So, a simple sum of some situations, not all of them, the things I’ve done, seen, smelled in these days.
Especially for me, until I remember them.
A part, a small part of what has happened to me in the last week of October 2006.
Nothing particularly fundamental, nothing essential, nothing definite. But it is part of what I am, of my small life.
Firstly I’ve been to rome to do a shoot. It was pleasant, it is always pleasant to go to the capital, to knot that those streets, those roads have seen fellini, mastroianni…
And by the way speaking about movies, I was able to see the premiere of david la chapelle’s movie.
Shit it was good!
It is on how dance, rap music and especially being together can save lives.
Here is the trailer:
http://www.davidlachapelle.com/film/rize_trailer.html
I ate at “maccheroni”, near the pantheon.
Nice and beautiful.
Then I came back to milan, worked, spoke, organized.
Then I went to verona to see roberto benigni that declaimed and explained, in the roman arena, the fifth chant of dante’s hell.
Shit this was also good!
The fifth chant is the one with “Love, which pardons no beloved from loving”.
Benigni is great.
I then ate at “castelvecchio”. Wonderful trolley of roasts and stews.
http://www.ristorantecastelvecchio.com/
The day after I went to an exhibition by mantegna.
Well done also to mantegna…
Back in milan I watched these movies:
Little miss sunshine, black dahlia and profumo.
Really good all three of them, but the best one was certainly the first one.
Then I finished “guns germs and steel”, which was advised to me by a.g., which I have to mention otherwise he’ll get pissed off (what are you laughing at?!?!), beautiful book about the last 15.000 years, I also finished cargo by simenon (wonderful, but it doesn’t count, because by simenon I’d also love the telephone book…) and I’ve started and almost finished the last one by de carlo, “sea of truth”.
This is all more or less.
I feel this list is somewhat arrogant and presumptuous, “I’ve done this, I’ve done that…”
But I AM, arrogant and presumptuous.
Maybe the problem is something else: will something stay with me of all this?
“and I fell like a dead weight falls”…