POMPEII ITALY – We spent the better part of the day in this remarkable Roman village. We haven’t been here for fifteen years or so – the site is dramatically improved. We learned a lot. There was an earthquake in AD 64 that badly damaged the town – much of the damage was unrepared and much of the population left. in the two years (or so) before the eruption in AD 79 the water had turned sulfurous – so a lot of people left. As a result the actual death toll from the eruption was only 1500 or so. The scope of the tragedy is best seen in the plaster casts of victims. The volcano stopped this man mid-breath nearly two thousand years ago. The glass case that encloses the cast throws its own grid of shadows across his body.
Day 6,012 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
Looking back exactly six years to an image shot with my Hasselblad XPan film camera. Day 3,821 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
