Black & white, continued

So...today is my promised Day Two of the black & white images inspired by Jennifer & Julie's ROY G BIV+ photo challenge. As I mentioned yesterday, I took my camera along when I went out to run a few errands earlier in the week, hoping to photograph some of the black & white my daughter and I had noticed the week before. It wasn't the kind of day I'd usually bother to take the camera, since there was very little light in the wake of the morning drizzle, but I didn't know if I would have another/better chance before the end of the week.

There are few activities I like less than fare lo shopping (though books and art supplies are an exception), but I do enjoy seeing the creative displays in the windows. And I appreciate the inherent contrast between the current designers' fashions being housed in palazzi that are several hundred years old. In The Piazzas of Florence, I wrote about the vignettes that are often found in the windows...how they seem to paint a portrait of a certain person, who loves to travel, or to write—and daydreamed about how my personal vignette might be set up in a stationery shop:

There would be a journal covered with marbled paper, with a tooled leather spine, my fountain pen with the luster of brown- and black-speckled tortoise shell, the brown leather book bag I bought at the Mercato Nuovo on my first visit to Florence, a shelf of favorite books… Perhaps this concept of the vignette is a contemporary version of the Renaissance portrait, in which the subjects were often painted with significant items from their lives. Long before that, when art was mostly religious, saints were often identified by a relevant symbol, and even in ancient times, people were inclined to enter the afterlife accompanied by meaningful objects from their earthly lives.

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This first quartet features photos from Stefanel—as I walked from window to window, I began to wonder if they might also be playing along with the black & white challenge (!)...every single one of the shop's seven windows was designed around black & white graphic symbols.

As I wandered along the streets of the city center, I couldn't believe how just many mannequins were dressed in black and/or white. And for the first time, I realized just how much signage is done in black and/or white (which of course makes sense for a number of reasons). All in all, it was an entertaining outing, though I must say that the reflections on the windows, and the context itself, i.e. the historic buildings, were much more fascinating to me than the goods for sale...beyond wondering about things like who might purchase the polka-dotted ensemble (upper right of second quartet)—and where she would wear it?

By the time I crossed over Ponte Santa Trìnita to return home, some swathes of blue sky had permeated the clouds and were reflecting onto the river. A couple of birds with black, grey & white feathers stood on one of the bridge's supporting piers; I love how the one is so perfectly centered, as if he'd been asked to pose for a photo.

A screenshot of the excursion's images...