The Framed View

Photography isn’t always about showing something. Sometimes, it’s a way of preserving a moment, a sensation, a fleeting harmony that happened to form in front of our eyes. 

This image, taken in Venice a few years ago, is one of those. A fragment of silence within the chaos — a collective gaze framed by stone.

[photo dated 2018-04-02]

There are cities that seem made to be seen through a frame. And I’m not just talking about photography.

That day in Venice, the light felt almost unreal. The chatter of tourists blended with the distant sound of gondolas caressing the water, but under that arch, everything felt suspended — like a waiting room before wonder. I stood there for a few seconds, still, between shoulders and silhouettes. No one spoke, as if before beauty, there was a silent agreement: lower your voice, lift your gaze.

What struck me most wasn’t the square, but that collective silence. A silence made of breath, of waiting — perhaps of respect.

A moment when people stopped walking, stopped checking the time, stopped taking random photos.

All there, looking at the same thing, without realizing they were part of it — backlit — in a photograph full of quiet humanity.

I took the shot. Not to take the image with me, but to try and hold that instant of unintentional harmony between perfect architecture and everyday disorder. A scene lived and seen a thousand times, yet new — because every frame changes the one who looks.

Some music seems written with the landscape, rather than with notes. “The Mistral Noir” is one of those.

Daniel Herskedal is from Norway, but this piece was born elsewhere — it was born on the road.

In 2021, he released Voyage, an album inspired by the world’s great winds. Among them, the Mistral: a cold, dry wind descending from southern France to the Mediterranean, bringing clear skies and a certain tension in the air.

This track draws from that: a bright wind with a dark soul, noir. Like those winter afternoons in cities that seem too beautiful to be real. And so, Herskedal’s tuba becomes a slow, deep narrator, moving through silence and scenery. No longer a brass band instrument — it sounds more like footsteps echoing on cobblestones.

It’s said that Herskedal recorded this album in naturally resonant spaces — churches, wooden halls — to give the sound depth without artificial effects. The result is music that doesn’t rush, but knows where it’s going. Just like a wind that passes through a city — touching, then vanishing.

As you listen, it’s hard not to imagine a historic city seen from afar. Or perhaps from behind an archway.