Happy Mother's Day! Happy Father's Day! Happy Graduation! Photo.net has great photography gift ideas for the Mom, Dad, or Grad in your life. Shop for camera bags, lenses, DSLRs, and more...
Editor's note: This excerpt first appeared in photographer and author Harold Davis' recent Focal Press book, Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Photography with Harold Davis.
The closer you...
"The fruiterers' shops have splendid stalls. The heaps of blooming
peaches, the quantities of golden, amber-colored transparent grapes colored with
the richest tints, shining like gems, and the grains of which, strung in the form
of necklaces and bracelets, would admirably adorn the neck and arms of some
antique Maenad, and beautifully fresh and admirably grouped. The tomatoes mingle
their brilliant scarlet with the golden tints and the watermelon shows its rosy
pulp through the cleft in its green skin. All these lovely fruits, brightly
lighted by gas jets, show well against the vine leaves upon which they are laid.
It is impossible to regale one's eyes more agreeably and often, without being
hungry, I purchased peaches and grapes through sheer loe of color. I recall also
certain fishmongers' stalls covered with little fishes so white, so silvery, so
pearly, that I felt like swallowing them raw, after the manner of the
ichthyophagists of the Southern seas, for fear of spoiling their
tints."
-- Theophile Gautier (1811-1872)
Gautier was writing about the Frezzeria, a street now given over to
restaurants and shops catering to tourists; only a couple of food shops remain
and no fruit or fish mongers. Still, much of the atmosphere he evokes can be
found in the Rialto Markets today.
