A Secret Garden To The Sea

There is an overgrown but perfect secret garden path behind an old villa in Sorrento we stumbled upon one day, and we followed down the rambling, winding trees and shrubbery and lemon and olive trees and blossoming flowers and into the shadows of green.

The further in we wandered, the thicker the growth grew. And yet everything was lush and cared for. Nothing dead, nothing abandoned.

We could smell the sea and the sun rays in the air, carried through cracks in the dense thicket. And so we followed the salt and the promise of blue until we reached the top of a cliff cut thousands of years ago, overlooking the crashing sea and rocks. The birds cried and dove for fish and soared the bright skies. We were alone in our own little paradise. It’ll be ours forever in memory.

Where is this enchanting place?

Sorrento, Italy, in Campania

At the Museo Correale Sorrento

https://www.museocorreale.it/museum/first-floor/

on the First Floor

In The Hall of Mirrors, on the first floor of the Museo Correale Art Museum of Sorrento, Italy, is the Baroque sitting room with the game of Biribisso and salon rooms dedicated to Flemish painting and Neapolitan decorative arts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. To the bottom right side of the first room hangs the incredible painting by 17th Century artist Artemisia Gentileschi, The Pentinent Magdalene.

Sorrento is one of the few places in Italy where you can see paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi. Nearby city of Naples is another, boasting several paintings at the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte and Palazzo Zevallos, Naples. There are a few paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Palazzo Pitti of Florence, and one in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and one in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, and two paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi in Rome at the Spada Gallery and one at the Palazzo Barberini Rome.

Once you visit each sumptuous room of art in the little villa museum, (note the sea views from the museum terrazzo and windows on the top floors), and before you leave, exit out the back to the lovely Museum Correale Sorrento gardens. Wander the paths and find our small secret garden, which will lead you out to the sea. You can easily retrace your steps back to the museum and exit on the Main Street and Piazza of Sorrento,

The museum is currently closed due to the pandemic but check their website if you plan to visit Sorrento, because it could reopen anytime. Many museums in Italy have reopened. Some require proof of vaccination OR a negative COVID test that is not older than two days. You can obtain rapid COVID tests while abroad in Italy. Check with a medical Farmacia (Pharmacy) with a green or blue lit cross outside its store front, and ask someone for a doctor recommendation - most medical services are inexpensive in Italy and many can accommodate walk in service. You can also contact your hotel concierge for a hotel doctor (they are most convenient but expensive). Hospitals are also an option, but may be an inconvenience except in emergencies.

Cloisters in the heart of the city of Naples, Italy

A quiet outdoor garden art oasis in the heart of the bustle and hustle.

You pay a small fee to the cloisters at a ticket booth, and then have (quiet, respectful) run of the place to stroll and contemplate nature and beauty.

This double monastic complex of Santa Chiara was built in 1313–1340 by Queen Sancha of Majorca and her husband King Robert of Naples, a mix of Provençal-Gothic style and 17th century Baroque.

Beautiful bright colors and beauty in a historic cemetery on a sunny day on Capri

Capri is a world famous resort, the playground for jet setters. It’s an ancient Roman island in Southern Italy still peppered with the villas of Emperors. I’ve heard it called the Beverly Hills of Italy because of its luxury boutiques and grand dame hotels. To me, Capri is about the quiet moments, the local back streets, the flora and fauna and places like the beautiful, very off the beaten path 19th century non-catholic cemetery.

The cemetery is in a residential, slightly run down section between Capri town and the Marina Grande but it overlooks the sea and is incredibly charming. Artists, writers, Anglo Saxons, Nordics and French in love with Capri are all buried here. There are Jewish graves and non-religious tombs and plenty of Madonna statues. And in modern Capri, plenty of Catholic Italians choose this idyllic spot with a sweeping view of the Tyrrhenian Sea for their final resting places.

I walked to the cemetery on the rather harrowing, not very pedestrian “old road down to Marina Grande” and found the graveyard after a ten minute “stroll” sidestepping uncomfortably close vespas, cars and buses like a veteran Italian. When in Rome, eh?

You may want to take a taxi from the bus station in Capri Town. Ask for the Cimitero acattolico di Capri. On Capri – not the pretty, much smaller catholic cemetery on Ana Capri – though that is also lovely. This is the spot with character and history and angels.

I wandered around this lovely melancholy place on such a beautiful sunny day I couldn’t help but be moved by all the beauty, by the sea views, by the wild blue flowers, the statues, and the declarations of love for Italy, and the names, and sometimes images of the lost beloved.

I shot these lush unedited analog photographs on Portra 400 and Portra 800 fine art 35 mm films in 2013.

Naples' Children / the sea / the sun

Written on a spring 2013 trip to Napoli with my husband, Rian, a man who could point out the brightest spark of life in the darkest corner with eagle eye precision. He had a penchant for passion and color and beauty unrivaled by anyone I’ve met in my life, yet he was soft spoken and bookish, content mostly to admire the masterpieces of life in quiet contemplation. When he imparted historical details to us it was always in a storyteller’s voice, transporting you back in time, until you almost felt as though you had experienced the battles or the love affairs or great triumphs and small defeats your self, centuries ago.

With Naples it was simply impossible for us to truly tire of the dark, craggy, cramped, decaying alleyways of Napoli. Because we found find them so beautiful. What is that expression? Life in the streets. But that’s not subtle enough. That has no emotion. No color. No fragrance. I’m just an American who falls in love with corners of places. Pages in books. The picture I see in everything. What do I know about it? Not much. But I loved it all the same. We loved it together. Without him I have yet to return, but I know in my heart I still love it because our love for it together could not burn away, not ever, not even in the deep void I hold within due to his earthly absence. I’m returning again soon I hope, because of love, because of him, and because of beauty. The hope of beauty, and the beauty of hope.

I photographed a little group of 11-13 year old Neapolitan boys smoking on the beach for the first time after they robbed a sweets cart of cigarettes like in some 1950s or 1960s Truffaut or Fellini film. The unofficial leader of the gang, a tall blond boy, taught the other boys how to smoke after they bummed cigarettes off a pair of kissing teenagers, and robbed a food cart and cafe of crisps and chocolates. Later we happened upon some typical boys playing football in the corner of a small piazza. The scent of coffee carried on the sea air, the salt so thick you can taste it on your tongue, and we searched for a restaurant in this gastronomical paradiso.

Purgatory Lane in Naples, Italy / off the beaten path

Naples is the flower of paradise. The last adventure of my life. Alexandre Dumas

There is a residential “street”, an off the beaten path alleyway with the delightfully macabre name of Vico Purgatorio Ad Arco, “Purgatory Lane”. I had a love affair with alleyways, you see, and never have I been more sated than in Napoli.

Every narrow opening makes you stop and turn and take in the sights and sounds of Naples. There’s something very beautiful about an alley way, something personal and old, full of secrets and stories and the every day life of strangers. I love the alleys of Boston and New York and New Orleans. Naples alley ways are incomparable because they are places people live to catch sunlight in the darkest places. Neapolitans hang their laundry on little racks on tiny iron balconies. They stack pretty painted clay pots and urns full of flowers. They tie little flags and bunting. The alleys are dark and dank and should be places for trash and death and forgetting. But they are walk ways. They are corners to stop for a moment and discuss the weather with your neighbor. They are short cuts and open windows and the sounds of football playing on an unseen television. They are windows across from cousins and lovers looking at each other when their parents are busy cooking or cleaning. They are the sounds of getting ready for the evening pasieggeta. They are as I had always imagined them: gritty, velvet thick, enchanting, private glimpses of the real Napoli.

There is the foreboding sign which points in the direction of Purgatory Lane. Most people would cross the street to avoid it. But we were different, weren’t we, you and I, Rian? That made it all the more inviting to us all those years ago. Entering purgatory was like stepping back in time. Even in the midst of the buzz of modern life around us.

Kids played football in the streets, they ran through the alleys laughing and dodging each other. Vespas and motorcycles lined the private walks to the apartments. There were surprising flourishes of pinks and golds and soft blues among the blacks and browns. Colors and shadows mixed. We walked through unnoticed. Life was there, the good and the bad. We were just tourists.

Anaïs Nin once said, “I don’t want to be a tourist in the world of images.”

We wanted to step into the picture and become a part of it.

But until I am gone, I am always on the other side of the lens, watching, capturing, stealing images like the thief that I am. I stalk moments and feelings. I want trouble and grit to make something beautiful out of it. I am selfish, a little bit soulless, in my pursuit of another perfect shot. Perhaps the right kind of person for a purgatory?

I chase strangers with the cunning of a secret admirer. I photograph statues like living things and people like sculptures. I cannot tell the difference between the saints and the sinners on the streets.