[ 22:31 friday 25 february – haggerston road, london ]
last march i spent a few sublime spring days in cornwall. the sky was clear, the air soft and filled with birdsong, the hedgerows bursting with fresh shoots and blossom. i made a small pilgrimage to madron well near penzance where i’d been just once before, more than a decade ago. one feels a sense of magic there. it’s easy to understand why so many people have considered it blessed through the centuries. here’s the film i shot.
: c :
[ 23:41 sunday 9 january – haggerston road ]
on saturday the first of may, a little before seven in the morning, i reached stromboli on the overnight ship from naples. it was a perfect spring morning. the flat sea gleamed like silk. the sky was cloudless. dolphins raced and jumped either side of the ship’s bow as we neared the black triangle of stromboli. i caught one of them in mid-air with my camera.
the ship dropped anchor a few hundred metres off the port, turned and backed slowly until it was close enough to put a couple of lines to the quay. the anchor chain was wound in until the ship was firmly held in position and the ramp started to creak down to meet the quay. i was one of the first off, carrying the big rucksack on my back. i hadn’t slept much on the voyage or the previous night but i was filled with excitement and emotion to be back on the island.
there were many familiar faces in the throng of people waiting on the quay. i was overjoyed to find my friend pasquale, whom i’d thought was in australia. we greeted each other then he got back to his work. i walked up to the malandrino restaurant and had a coffee and pastry with my friend paolo. then he took me down to his house on the rocks in piscita where i’d spent my first winter on stromboli, and which he was generously lending me for the coming week.
alone in the main room, a spacious open cube with white walls and a polished cement floor, i put down my bags and stood still. the familiar sense of arrival and peace swept over me accompanied by the soft breeze passing through the room, the twittering of birds outside and the shushing of the waves on the little black-sand beach below. i organised my belongings, changed into shorts and sandals and walked out onto the terrace to look out over spiaggia lunga and breath the sweet air.
thus began the last day of my old life. i spent the rest of it wandering around the island, catching up with friends, seeking out people i hadn’t seen in a long time, reacquainting myself with beloved places, piecing together what had changed in the six months since my previous visit. the first of may is the “festa dei lavoratori” throughout italy, the workers’ day celebration. on stromboli there’s a big party at the port in front of one of the main restaurants with music and free food and drink for everyone. it’s the last big community celebration before the summer tourist season takes over. i knew lots of my friends would be there but by the evening i felt so tired it was hard to summon much enthusiasm for the walk across the island. i sat reading in my kitchen by the light of a candle, soothed by the waves and flickering flame. but in the end i put on my shoes, extinguished the candle and set out for the port, intending to show my face briefly then return.
the party was already in full swing when i arrived. a couple of hundred islanders were dancing and making merry to a band whilst the air was filled with smoke from a row of big charcoal grills on which meat was being cooked. i collected a glass of wine, spoke to some friends and danced half-heartedly. in my memory the picture of what happened next is that the crowd parted and a smiling young man walked towards me through the middle. i didn’t know him but the family resemblance prompted me to ask “are you matteo sforza, luigi’s brother?”. an hour later we were at the end of fico grande’s ruined old jetty, kissing.
the days that followed were sublime. matteo was working in a shop during the day. in the evening he would come to my house where we would eat dinner, play music, talk and dance. towards the end of the week we took the hydrofoil to lipari together to visit matteo’s older sister anna. the last evening carried the heaviness of everything we were trying to avoid thinking about. all too soon it was time for me to board the hydrofoil to milazzo and watch matteo’s face shrinking to a speck on the quay. i felt numb. matteo had talked of visiting london in october but it seemed distant and unreal.
three weeks later matteo arrived in london with his over-stuffed suitcases. i met him at the airport and led him back joyously to my house in dalston. we haven’t looked back since.
here are the photographs from that enchanted week on stromboli when i met him.
: c :
[ 16:10 friday 31 december – haggerston road ]
a few days before christmas matteo and i recorded our first song together. he wrote the words, i did the music, he sang, i played and produced the finished track. here’s the result.
: c :
[ 21:05 monday 27 september – haggerston road ]
back in february bertrand and i attended scrapclub, an occasional party where guests are offered the opportunity to destroy domestic appliances, laboratory equipment, furniture and a variety of other merchandise with sledge-hammers and steel bars. the event operated on the following cycle: the organisers laid out a selection of items, pulled the names of a dozen guests out of a hat, provided these guests with goggles and hard hats, gave the cue for them to set about destroying the objects, swept up the debris once it had all been smashed to smithereens, then started laying out a new selection of objects. all the while there were djs playing noise music. it was rather exhilarating.
here’s my video from the event.
: c :
[ 02:10 wednesday 18 august – haggerston road ]
here’s one final album from the venezuela trip. sixteen photographs from an afternoon spent exploring a small bay on the north coast of gran roque. the prevailing swell breaks onto this side of the island. it is more rugged and inhospitable than the south. the bay’s sheltered by two guano-covered islets which create a calmer lagoon good for swimming. successive storms have piled up layers of coral, torn from the sea bed, until there is now a four foot high crescent surrounding the bay.
slideshow and thumbnails below. higher resolution downloads available at flickr.
: c :
[ 00:29 tuesday 10 august – haggerston road, london ]
after another batch of scanning here are forty-four pictures from my time on the island of los roques in january, where i found my long-lost friend matias along with his wife carolina and son esteban. uploading the photos brought back a host of memories. it’s one of the most intense and beautiful places i’ve ever been.
view a slideshow of the complete set here.
: c :
[ 00:08 tuesday 29 june – haggerston road ]
herewith fifty photos from gran roque, the largest island in the los roques archipelago. i arrived there with adrien on the morning of new years day when the island was asleep. after the turbulence of caracas the silence was amazing. just the shhh of the low waves on the white sand and the plop of pelicans plunging into the water.
from gran roque i made my way to the tiny island of rasqui to visit matias. coming back from rasqui after a few days gran roque seemed conversely like a metropolis, full of bustle and life.
view the set here.
: c :
[ 00:54 friday 18 june – haggerston road ]
i’ve uploaded 26 photos from caracas taken on the last day of 2009 and the first day of 2010. as well as being venezuela’s capital city, caracas is also reputed to have the highest homicide rate per capita of any city in the world, predominantly gun related. it’s not a beautiful city. actually it’s about the ugliest city i’ve encountered anywhere in south america. all spanish colonial structures from the seventeenth and eighteenth century have been destroyed. even nineteenth century buildings are rare. most of the architecture is from the sixties and seventies. not much of it is any good.
clicking any of the four photos below will open a slideshow of the whole set. if you’re interested i wrote more about my experiences in caracas here.
: c :
[ 22:39 wednesday 2 june – haggerston road ]
on christmas day i went walking with mum and dad in the forest of dean. here’s what i wrote at the time:
this afternoon we went out walking in the forest of dean. everything was crusted in snow. a deep, timeless silence hung amongst the trees disturbed only by the crunch of our feet on the icy ground. the river wye was in full flood, winding around the limestone cliffs of symonds yat and churning tirelessly over the shallows. the sun hung low above the horizon and sent fingers of gold piercing the mist between the boughs. we got lost and ended up walking rather further than we intended. it was breathtakingly beautiful. i took photographs with a sense of wide-eyed wonder.
now, five months later, i’ve uploaded eleven of the photos. you can see them all here.
: c :
// charles armstrong // 