Number 200

Steve McCurry. “Young Afghan refugee in Peshawar”.  Pakistan, 2002

 

We have reached a new milestone, namely, that of the 200 articles posted.

I thought a lot about how to celebrate it, without repeating the obvious thanks to all of you who have been following my blog since its beginnings – and we are also close to the first year since its birth, next March.

I would not want that every hundred reached there was a thank you in words, which then also become empty of meaning.

After all, the Blog is like a private diary, on which to write, sketch, outline, without limits of expression.

It was born as a Photography blog, because it's my biggest passion, but then it became a diary of everything I love.

And, as I have often written, my first great passion was drawing.

You can almost say that I was born with a pencil in my hand. Then I set it aside until I didn't draw anymore. From the age of twenty onwards.

The eye that drew on white sheets has become the eye that photographs.

 

As it was for writing. By now I was resigned to the fact that I would never write again as a young man. Then came my books, articles for news sites, and finally this blog. Sometimes, almost ironically, it makes me think that now I am more a writer than a photographer.

But the drawing instead is not. I tried sometimes, but the hand is gone.

A few days ago I was talking to a friend of mine about this, convinced that those who knew how to draw in the past could do it at any time, again and with the same skill. But nothing more wrong.

Even the eye, if not photographed continuously, loses agility and composition. Let alone the hand, after decades of inactivity.

 

For this reason, I believe that my homage to all of you has a particular value and more intense than a simple thank you.

It seems like a nice way to cross the threshold of 200 articles.

Combining drawing with photography, which I think is a great love for you too.

I, therefore, chose this portrait of McCurry: the young Afghan refugee in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2002, because – as many of my photography students know – it is one of the portraits I love most of the great American photographer, and was one of the very first I admired when I began to blow on the embers of the photography fire.

I know, it's nothing fancy, and it also makes me angry looking at it, because I know I would have done it much better once.

But that's the way life goes. In the end I also enjoyed burying it in pencil.

 

It is a drawing born for this blog and I think it is a good number 200, and above all my personal way to thank you.

Now I have 100 more articles to think about the next gift.

 

• Number 100 
• An Old Green Letter 

Italian version