SALLY: Totally. One hundred percent. We have a bun-
galow in Italy where we’ve been spending summers for
a while now and every year we try and go on an Italian
adventure somewhere we have not been. My husband
wanted to go to Sicily, so we decided to do a three-week
journey driving around the entire Island. I didn’t have
a notion of photographing anything specific; it was a
cultural trip. One day we were in Syracuse, sightseeing
in the old town. It was a beautiful afternoon and I wan-
dered around with my camera just looking. I was walk-
ing through the super narrow streets, and as I’m admir-
ing the ornate architecture around me, I keep seeing all
this flapping color overhead. Without really focusing
on it, I kept thinking, what is all that colorful move-
ment? I had a point and shoot camera so I took some
very casual pictures, and continued my way. When I
came back to New York and looked at those pictures,
I thought, “what is that?” And I liked it so much that I
kept talking to my husband about it and he said, “May-
be you ought just to go right back there, literally get on
a plane and go back to Syracuse”. So I did. I shot the
initiating “snapshots” when we were in Sicily in Sep-
tember and in February I went back to Sicily for two
weeks, to the same exact location where I’d taken those
first pictures, and thus the project began. I didn’t plan
this body of work ahead of time at all. If I hadn’t taken
a walk on that afternoon, on that particular day, I never
would have done this project. I only realized in going
back and trying to reshoot it, that the day on which I
made those first “snapshots”, I had the perfect condi-
tions, a stiff wind and an incredibly blue sky on a mas-
sively bright day. If I hadn’t had that particular weather
on that particular day, I would have never made those
few snapshots, thus I would have never made this body
of work. (And so began my frustration of trying to rep-
licate that day which was very hard to do since I can’t
plan the weather! Nor can I plan when people hang
their clothing out to dry, particularly their “interesting”
clothing). Aerial started by the fortuitous accidental
seeing of something compelling – as opposed to having
a concept or idea ahead of time . . and being able to take
a journey with the seeing.
STEVE: How does serendipity play into your process?
SALLY: What I love about photography is the act of dis-
covery and with interacting with the physical world. I
like wandering around looking and discovering. I could
never be a painter in a studio, as much as I love paint-
ing. And I could never work like so many photographers
work today on conceptual projects that are created with
Photoshop, manipulating images or using existing imagery.
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