A Grocery Store in Rome

Some photographs emerge not from the pursuit of the exceptional, but from the quiet insistence of the everyday. This frame, captured in Rome, is one of them. I didn’t wait for decisive moments or orchestrate elements. I simply stood in front of this unassuming mini market, with its fluorescent signage blinking “COLD DRINKS” and “APERTO,” and let the banality speak.

The storefront is wedged into a stone facade, a brutal contrast softened by the cluttered joy of cheap pleasures: laminated posters of ice creams, fizzy drinks stacked like bricks, and a faded theatre poster wedged between glossy wrappers. You can almost smell the dusty coolness inside — a refuge from August heat.

Technically, it’s a straightforward image. Compositionally, the vertical lines of the building and the doorframe hold the chaos together. The perspective isn’t corrected; the right edge tilts slightly, pulling your gaze down the street. I left it that way on purpose. Perfection would’ve sterilised the honesty. The exposure leans bright, verging on overexposed in the whites, especially on the signage and the plastic bottles. But again, that choice — or tolerance — suits the subject. Harsh Mediterranean light doesn’t flatter; it overwhelms, and any pretence of balance would have betrayed the truth of that.

Shot on 35mm film, the grain is present but controlled. The colours, particularly the reds and yellows, pop with that unmistakable chemical fidelity — not HDR punch, but sun-washed insistence. This isn’t romanticism. It’s documentation. It’s the photograph as witness, not as interpreter.

No one posed. No one moved. It’s just a corner of a city that pretends not to care whether it’s seen or not. And that’s why I made the picture.