The Abused Balcony

The irony here was too sharp to ignore. A fascist-era building , clad in travertine and brick, declares in Latin: Ave, dulce vatis flumen — Ave, vetus orbis nomen. “Hail, sweet river of the poet — Hail, ancient name of the world.”

Above, the symbols of empire; below, a tangle of satellite dishes, like mechanical flowers craning toward the global signal. The architecture aims for eternity, the technology changes with every billing cycle. I framed this head-on, symmetry unbroken, letting the building’s own monumentality dictate the geometry.

The composition rests on that tension — history and broadcast, stone and plastic, rhetoric and reception. The Latin inscription begs for permanence. The dishes are temporary, bolted on in haste. That collision makes the frame.

I exposed for the whites in the marble to retain texture, pulling back just enough to keep the sky from flattening. The red brick adds a chromatic anchor, grounding the frame in that unmistakable Roman palette. Colour correction leaned toward neutral — I didn’t want nostalgia or warmth. The building gives you that already.

Technically, this is clean. Shot on a tripod for precision, small aperture for sharpness front to back. The lines had to hold — any tilt or softness would collapse the balance. Post was minimal: some sharpening, some shadow lift under the balcony. Let the elements do the work.

This is a portrait of dissonance. Of how messages change, but the pedestals stay the same. Salute the poet, stream the football.