PRAGUE PALINDROMES
This project was initially conceived it as a portrait series, in black and white, with cityscapes as
background. But once I got to Prague, it became obvious that the city had different plans. The
weather was nasty, with cold snowy winds that gave my poor Nikon all it could handle. Yet,
through it all, Prague was so vivid, so varied, so unbelievably colorful... a sort of urban
rainbow... I couldn't suppress its iridescence if I tried.
Like the very best models, this city is more than a supremely photogenic beauty: it is so full of
personality, of possibilities, of surprises... In sum, Prague was just too colorful for B&W, and too
charismatic to be shoved in the background. So bit by bit, I developed the idea for these
Palindromes, where the human and urban elements are given equal importance, inviting the
viewer to read each work in both directions: from portrait to landscape, from intimate to
public, from human to urban. And vice versa.
Marcello Manca