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Quality Check. Try Before You Buy
This image was taken outside a Parisian bookstore, a moment as classic as it is current: a man stands in the entrance, thumbing through a photobook, absorbed but casual. It’s not staged—he didn’t even glance at the camera. He was too focused, as anyone who’s spent hours weighing the purchase of one more photography book will understand. His expression wasn’t about doubt; it was about judgment—quality check, plain and simple. The composition offered itself. Framed by the bookstore’s open door, the man becomes the central figure in a visual funnel, surrounded by vertical stacks of books, postcards, and prints. The image flattens space into layered density—foreground filled with titles, background…
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Mario Asks for it!
The political campaign for the European election is started. This is one of the posters showing the Democratic Party (PD) strategy: fooling the voters into thinking that PD cares about what its constituencies have to say…
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Street-Photographer’s eye side effect
Seeing the world through the Street-Photographer’s eye makes you more aware of your surroundings both at a conscious and unconscious, Zen-like, level. A side-effect of this state is that you can exploit-it for personal safety when traveling in risky places, like big stations where pickpockets are doing their tricks.
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Traffic Jam in Bruxelles
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Parisian’s Bags
On a brisk afternoon in Paris, the pavements fill with people moving at slightly different speeds, each carrying the traces of their own direction. What drew me to the scene was the convergence of three figures—unrelated to each other yet momentarily aligned—walking toward me with distinct rhythms and expressions. Their presence formed a kind of spontaneous procession, defined not by ceremony but by the simple momentum of city life. The woman on the left moved with purpose, her large green bag swinging in counterbalance to her stride. The scarf softened the sharp lines of her businesslike outfit, adding a touch of looseness to an otherwise structured silhouette. The woman on…
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Perfect Strangers
This was shot at a crossing in Brussels. Late afternoon, golden hour starting to lean into haze, and the kind of sidelight that makes the most mundane street scenes feel sculptural. I wasn’t looking for a story—I was just following the light. What I got instead was this: two people, frozen in proximity, framed by urban geometry and indifferent routine. They didn’t know each other. That much was clear. No shared glances, no body language suggesting connection. Just two people waiting for the light to change, locked in that brief, suspended moment before movement resumes. But visually, they worked in tandem—her neon green jacket, his mustard ochre coat, both cutting…
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National Security
A danger for the National Security? This picture is nothing special, but for the fact that while I was taking it a security guard at the European Parliament tried to stop me on the “National Security” excuse, by claiming that photos were not allowed. Minding the lesson of “Stand your ground” I countered politely the requests of the guard, by telling him: – First: shooting in public spaces is perfectly legal, – Second: there where no “no-photos allowed” signs, – Third: “I am a lawyer and a journalist. I checked both EU and Belgian Law and find nothing that could prevent me to do what I am doing. Could you…
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Protected: Mr. and Mrs. Fabiotritapepe
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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A Roller Coaster… A Kind Of
It’s not a ride. But it feels like one. Shot with an ultra-wide lens, this pedestrian bridge bends and twists like it’s unsure whether it’s architecture or attraction. The metal curves upward, forward, out of the frame—pulling your eye (and your balance) with it. Perspective doesn’t just stretch here—it spirals. Geometry gets theatrical. At the top of the climb, a small group walks calmly, as if unaware they’re part of the illusion. No one is rushing. One wears yellow, another carries a bag—ordinary people on a not-so-ordinary structure. The Adriatic glints below, a boat docked quietly at the base. It could be a coastal scene from anywhere in Italy, but…
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Lamp
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Skating on Avenue Louise
The architecture of Avenue Louise is built to impress — symmetrical, imposing, wrapped in glass and concrete. It speaks the language of power, efficiency, and institutional gravitas. Yet here, cutting across the uniformity of its grid, a lone skateboarder defies gravity and symmetry alike. In mid-air, suspended between takeoff and landing, the young skater rewrites the function of space. This plaza wasn’t designed for movement like his — spontaneous, raw, unruly — yet it hosts it with unexpected grace. The stark concrete façade becomes a backdrop, not a boundary. This is the city as canvas, the act of skating as resistance and reinterpretation. While others walk briskly from meeting…
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Hanging Heart at via Olmetto
Taken in Milan, this photograph is built around a single point of chromatic and emotional focus — a small, glossy red heart suspended from the centre of an ornate iron grille. The restrained colour palette of the stone façade and dark metalwork works to its advantage, ensuring the heart becomes a magnetic anchor for the viewer’s gaze. The pattern of the wrought iron, a chain of interlocking circles bisected by vertical bars, lends the image symmetry and rhythm, subtly broken by the heart’s irregular organic shape. The composition is tightly framed, allowing no distraction from the relationship between object and setting. The verticals of the grille are aligned with precision,…
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A
Some photographs are built on complexity — overlapping narratives, layered subjects, visual chaos distilled into coherence. This one is built on the opposite: a single, dominant letter and the deliberate restraint of elements. The capital “A” scrawled across the double wooden doors becomes both subject and statement. Whether an anarchist mark, an initial, or just a passing act of vandalism, it punctuates the otherwise rigid, formal architecture. The geometry of the building — rectangular panels, horizontal mouldings, the granite base — forms a rigid grid, and into this grid the bicycle is quietly inserted, its own triangles and curves breaking the dominance of the rectangles without challenging their order. Technically,…
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Hanging Towels
Some photographs are not about events, people, or decisive moments. They are about the quiet visual structures that shape daily existence without asking for attention. This frame belongs to that category. Taken with a Fuji X-T1 fitted with a Summicron 50 mm lens, the image centres on a simple domestic gesture: a few pieces of laundry left to dry against a sun-worn wall. There is nothing exceptional in the scene itself. What makes it photographically interesting is the way ordinary elements align into a restrained composition that almost constructs itself.
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Off-Duty Eurocrats in Bruxelles
Late afternoon outside the European Parliament is a curious time. The intensity of the day’s debates, meetings, and bureaucratic rituals evaporates into the chill air, leaving behind something more recognisably human. I caught this scene as the sun was sinking, the light flattening into that pale, slightly diffused wash Brussels often wears in winter. I framed the shot to emphasise the contrast between the rigid geometry of the architecture and the small figure of the man stepping into the foreground. The curved glass façade on the right dominates, its repeating elements pulling the eye deeper into the image. The building almost seems to lean forward, pressing its presence into the…
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Tour Saint-Jacques, Standby
Paris, the city of light, reflects off the polished chrome helmets of the sapeurs-pompiers. The firemen stand poised, immobile but ready. Their posture does not betray fatigue, nor doubt—it’s the stance of trained patience, of focused anticipation. This image captures a moment between action and calm. The fire hoses lie coiled with potential energy, valves shut, mechanisms still untouched. Behind them, the urban rhythm carries on: buses glide, pedestrians move, the sirens wait. The presence of the firefighters, framed by the bustle of Haussmannian façades and traffic, signals that something mighthave happened—or almost did. The mirrored helmets become metaphors themselves. They do not just shield: they reflect the world around them. Their function is…
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Late for Lunch
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Breakfast at Rue Brisemiche
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Mid-Morning Break at Place Jourdan
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Early Leave at Bruxelles-Midi
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Walking Table in via Cornaggia
Via Cornaggia in Milan is not a place one usually associates with humour in photography, yet this image carries an almost surreal tone. A man strides down the cobblestone street, carrying a table on his shoulders, its legs pointing skyward like some awkward sculpture. His face is completely obscured, leaving only body language and context to speak for him. The everyday act of transporting furniture becomes, in this frame, an absurd visual gesture. The narrow perspective of the street enhances the composition. The converging lines of the walls and cobbled path guide the eye directly to the man, amplifying his centrality within the scene. The geometry of the table mirrors…
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Hard Choice In Quai de la Corse
I made this frame near Île de la Cité, on Quai de la Corse—one of those places where the mundane and the picturesque casually coexist. What first drew my attention wasn’t the postcard rack, but the slight choreography unfolding around it. Two figures—clearly together, maybe tourists or locals revisiting the familiar—stood split by the display, momentarily anonymised by a turnstile of nostalgia. That was the hook: a photo of people concealed by the very thing designed to represent their surroundings. The irony held my attention long enough to lift the camera. I composed the shot with that in mind. The vertical rack bisects the frame precisely, interrupting the couple’s presence…
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Is This Photo Illegal?
Yes, if it were taken in Hungary. Against the European Convention of Human Rights, Hungary passed a law that by next March 15 will require any photographer shooting in public space to obtain a signed “model release form”. This provision will be bashed by either the EU Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights (for the very same reasons I explained here), but it will take time and – first of all – a photographer that sacrifices himself on the altar of freedom.
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Relaxed Call at Boulevard du Palais
Paris lends itself so well to moments of quiet theatre, and this image captures one of those understated urban vignettes — a waiter leaning against a doorway, mid-call, somewhere between duty and a fleeting pause. The scene’s composition is clean and deliberate. The vertical symmetry of the architecture — the heavy wrought-iron window on the left, the dark panelled doors on the right — creates a structured backdrop that frames the human subject without overpowering him. The soft patina of the stone façade carries a sense of history, its muted tones setting off the crisp whites of the waiter’s apron and shirt. His black vest and bow tie anchor him…
