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Published: June 13th 2015
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We had a whole day that we hadn’t planned for in Milan and decided to focus on photography, which is harder than it sounds. Our first stop was a major show, “Inside Italy”, in association with the Expo. It was terrific. Neither one of us had ever heard of any of the photographers and so we saw a lot of works that were both excellent and new to us. We were especially taken by the work of Luca Campigotto. This was the first of a two-part show in conjunction with the Expo that displayed the work of Italian photographers; the second part will include photographers from other countries who worked in Italy. What made it extra enjoyable was that there was an excellent audio guide that explained the background of each photographer. We should have quit while we were ahead and ended our photography focus then, but we didn't. The next exhibit we went to see was work of Helmut Newton. He is a very famous photographer and fashion photographer who was born in Germany in1920 and fled Germany in 1938 because he was Jewish and smart enough to see the writing on the wall. The works on display were all
relatively small, black and white nudes. Jack knew that Newton was a “tits” man and only photographed women with large breasts. The works sold for $12,500 - $25,000 which is more than a little out of our price range. I guess I’m not a “tits” kind of woman. We started talking with the young woman on the staff who explained that other than what was on the walls there wasn’t anything else to look at since the people who owned the gallery were in the process of closing it. We asked if she know of any galleries that displayed the works of young photographers. She said she used to work at a gallery where they did this, but we had to understand that we might find some of the work “strange”. We weren’t sure if she really meant strange in our sense of the word or if it was a language thing. She called the owner and gave us the address. Milan has a very extensive subway system and we used it heavily the entire time we were in the city. The gallery with the “strange” art was at the other end of the city. Remember it was over 90
with no breeze and no clouds. When we go to the closest subway stop we decided to take a cab to the gallery. The place was at least 2 miles from the subway stop so we never would have made it on foot. However, when we finally got there, we couldn’t find the gallery, couldn’t find anyone who had ever heard of it and we couldn’t’ get the phone number of the owner to work. It turned out that one of the highest rated gelato places in Milan was there, so we treated ourselves to their lightly salted pistachio gelato that was excellent. Jack flagged a cab and we retraced our steps. I have to admit it was kind of a bummer. We both agreed that when you try to do something you haven’t researched, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Nonetheless, it was two hours of travel for an above average gelato cone so the math doesn’t work out that well.
We didn’t have dinner plans so I went on Trip Advisor, the resource used by 20 million travelers, and looked for a restaurant. I didn’t pay much attention to the website for the restaurant and
immediately went to an Open Table like site and booked a table for 8. We were able to find the restaurant, but it was closed. Since we had not idea where we were or what options were close by, we looked up the two restaurants that we could see on Trip Advisor (I don’t know why we trust it so much) and picked the one with a better rating. Jack ordered a pasta dish to start and chicken and I ordered risotto. I was already feeling kind of crummy, so we cabbed it back to the hotel after dinner.
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