Three continents. Years that don't sit in order in my memory anymore. The places I left, some I'm still half-living in. None of this is a record of where I went. It's a record of where I was looking.
MINDELO
Nobody here is rushing toward anything you'd recognize.
Natural blonde.
Two women do the pulling. One man does the smiling.
The boardwalk doesn't care that the sky is showing off.
He's not asking the octopus twice.
The cabanas are half-dressed.
At a Mindelo farm, somebody's always on duty at the fence.
Tavira
800 years later, something's still watching from the roof.
The red carpet for someone special.
710TV5 isn't going anywhere today.
The sky did this on its own time, not the photographer's.
Half the boats here have somewhere to be. Half of them clearly don't.
0463 keeps a schedule
Praia do Barril. Nobody hauled the anchors away.
Vila do Conde
The plaza doesn't look like the same place twice.
The lights are up. Nobody's said.
The kayakers are working. The boats already gave that up.
By night the plaza shines while the boats take shelter.
Low tide hands the rock back to whatever was waiting.
The moon showed up early. The aqueduct isn't impressed.
Someone built stairs to water that was never going to cooperate.
HOUSESITS ABROAD
Borrowed houses & people's cats, the particular silence of a city that isn't yours yet.
Berlin has an official currywurst, an origin myth, and about a thousand places to argue about which stand gets it right.
Vienna at midnight in February, when the city belongs to no one.
Budapest took its bombed-out buildings and turned them into the best bars in Europe. The ruin bar was not ironic — it was practical, then it became a thing.
Zandvoort: the ride is down, the sea is open, and the painted faces keep smiling.
He wasn't watching the street. The street was watching him.
Norman Foster put a glass dome on top of the German parliament, looking down on their representatives.
Buenos Aires moves like a European city that took a wrong turn somewhere over the Atlantic and never went back.
Route D to Nußdorf, coming whether you're ready or not.
Neukölln on a warm evening — the street doing what streets are supposed to do.
"WORLDWIDE RUST" stenciled on the hull. The red door disagrees.
Kinderdijk has been keeping this part of the Netherlands above water since the 18th century. The windmills are not decorative.
Canal life.
Antwerp Centraal was built to make arriving feel like an occasion. It still does.
Sunday morning in Retiro, the benches lined up like an argument for staying.
Girona's old town stacks up like sediment — Roman, medieval, now — and these two have claimed the best seat in it.
The TV tower through the bones of Anhalter Bahnhof — Berlin's habit of leaving its ruins standing so you don't forget.
Zaha Hadid landed a diamond-faceted glass ship on top of a 1920s fire station and called it the Port House. Antwerp didn't argue.
Paris from the Arc at night, in the rain, when the boulevard turns into something you didn't expect.
Along the WAY
We explored the country we'd left, one address at a time.
Sunset over the Industrial Canal, the bridge holding the light.
The Boston Public Library reading room has been doing this since 1895. It has not lost its argument.
Park Street Station, where everyone is waiting for something.
The Bay Bridge from Treasure Island, pointed at a city that keeps making itself up.
D.C., January 2019. The wave was real.
He was in the driveway when we got home. He finished what he was doing before he left.
My view into the city.
Old car bodies used as riverbank erosion control on the Tuckasegee. Appalachian engineering. It works.
A boat that gave up on water.
The Baltimore market sets up under I-83 every Sunday. The shade is welcome. The market provides everything else.
Jubilee ran the yard. Tootles supervised. We were staff.
Every good housesit has an outdoor shower. This one had a view.
The Ventura Pier on a gray morning, the flags doing their best.
The Bourne Bridge has been lowering for the Cape Cod commuter rail since 1935. Some things still work.
Boston from the harbor, the city stacking itself up against the sky.
The Long Way Home.
Eight years of mornings in places that weren't home yet — and then, gradually, were
Semana Santa in Antigua. The alfombras take all night to make and the procession walks over them by morning.
Guanajuato climbs the hill like it had no choice. It didn't — the silver mines were already there.
The Daniela Jamileth came in with the catch. The pelicans had been waiting.
He had something to say. They were busy.
Market day moves at its own speed, which is faster than it looks.
Lake Atitlán, mid-morning. They had somewhere to be and were not hurrying.
Mexico City feeds itself on the street, after dark, from women who have been doing this their whole lives.
Fish, plantains, fire. The menu was not written down because it didn't need to be.
Fish Shacks on the beach in Crucita, Ecuador. Highly controversial. Manta, across the bay, is the tuna capital of the world.
Retiro at rush hour — the whole city trying to get somewhere at once.
The boats go out before dawn. By mid-morning, they are staged for the next day.
The morning catch, a busy beach.
Casco Viejo has been falling apart and coming back for a hundred years. It's currently doing both.
Every street in San Miguel de Allende leads to the jardín.
La Balanza Mercantil anchors the corner.
San Miguel de Allende takes its processions seriously. The children had been practicing.
The Madres have been marching since 1977. "Siempre con las Madres." Always with the Mothers.
The Mercado del Delta in Tigre gets its supplies by boat. There is no other way in.
The girl had the best seat.
Every snack made in the country, stacked on crates at a corner in Quito. She knew where everything was.
The Andina scale has been on this counter since before anyone in the shop was born.
Two men, a painted table, a fistful of beer caps. Checkers on the beach.
El Cacerolaz — the casserole dish — named after the protest tradition of banging pots in the street.
Cool, casual.
I have no explanation for any of this. Every city, I stop for the same things — the clocks, the market stalls, the light fixtures & doors that grab my attention. I've decided this says something about me. I'm not sure what.
The Watchers
They were there before I arrived. They'll be there long after.
What's over there?
Gargoyle in panic mode.
Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum
This sculture screams Valencia, Spain
The look of utter devastation among the ruins in Pompeii, Italy.
The Cloak of Conscience, outside the Cathedral in Salzburg, Austria.
Somewhere in Scotland.
Bibi on the Ball, by artist Carole Feuerman, Paris.
Ópera pública street art by Alicja Biala
MARKETS
Every city feeds itself differently. I always stop to look.
Salad time, Cuenca, Ecuador.
Defensa Market in Buenos Aires.
Boston Haymarket earns its reputation.
Endless varieties of potatoes in one place, Salta, Argentina.
Not corporate-raised chicken. Antigua, Guatemala
Olives, feta cheese, Kalamata, Greece.
Best gorditas ever. SMA, Mexico.
Don't touch. Athens, Greece
Herbs & Spices.
Beans, you name it, they had it.
Vegetarian's Delight.
Oaxaca, Mexico
SIGNS
Half the time I can't read them. Doesn't matter.
18th arrondissement.
Seems like a deal.
Wine country. Salta, Argentina.
Tasting is believing.
Beautiful Girona, Spain.
by David Shrigley, installed in Scotland.
Key West, my kind of town.
Uphams Corner, Dorchester, Boston.
You had to be there.
TIME
I might have photographed more clocks than sunsets. I'm not sure what that means.
National Zoo, Washington, D.C.
In Mexico City. Designed by Fray Gabriel Chávez de la Mora
The Prague Orloj. Every tourist photographs it. The tourists are right.
Making time.
And a clock. Porto, Portugal
Gold hands, black iron tracery, gothic severity. The clock as argument.
A favorite.
The clock above the crowd on the boulevard. Paris in autumn.
Built to last. Salta, Argentina.
MOVEMENT
Platforms, waiting, the doors that open and close without asking.
Outside Centraal station. One of the busiest. I totally relate.
Almost neon, Mexico City Metro.
In 1913, Line A was the first subway in South America. In 2011, the original cars functioned, complete with wooden floors, windows, and seats.
That's the one. Run.
The long corridor. Chillin.
Easy on, easy off.
Bernina Express.
Time to get on the train.
Hand-painted Athens metro car.
Crossing the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.
Glass and reflection, buses below, the city folded on itself. Transit as architecture.
It's a scramble to get a seat.
Light
Silver-jeweled lamp
Imagine that.
Street light on art steroids.
Evening light.
Reflective
Finding light.
The In & Out of It
Last one out the door.
We all know what Permanente means.
Do I have to say Lisbon?
No secrets here.
Welcoming.
Ageless.
COULDN'T LOOK AWAY
I don't have a better explanation than that.
It speaks for itself.
In Vermont. A stained-glass gym.
Gothic arches receding into light, one distant figure, the whole thing holding still.
Watermelon and bees. Summer saying exactly what it means.
Rolling towards the storm?
Dazzling art in nature.
Art looking at itself.
The Palacio Barolo in Buenos Aires, designed by Mario Palanti, with the cosmology of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Layered snow-framed graffiti, text fighting abstraction, nobody winning.
Found
Six years in. Still stopping to look.
Fishing on the rocks above the Atlantic. The sea has no interest in being reassuring.
The moliceiros at the dock, painted prows facing the same direction. Aveiro keeping its traditions afloat.
Porto at night, the city climbing its own hill toward the light.
The city moving around her, indifferent.
Stone ruin overtaken by ivy on a green hillside in Gerês.
Praça de São João, Vila do Conde
Porto's Luís I bridge from above, pedestrians threading the upper deck, the Douro below.
The aqueduct in Vila do Conde, still standing in a field of wildflowers. Four hundred years and nobody moved it.
Low tide in Vila do Conde.
Curbside Dining survived.
A scene out of a movie.
Heat up the grill.
Sandpipers on the rocks in breaking surf, holding their ground with the particular calm of things that belong here.
The azulejo bathroom — floor, walls, fixtures, all of it tiled. Portugal decorating the room.
The stone pergola, bare vines, winter light coming through. Someone built this to make walking slower.
The Gerês valley from above. Every terrace a decision made by hand, century after century.
The flower carpet in Vila do Conde. They make it overnight. The procession walks over the next morning.
Laugh, love, live in Portugal.
We're still here.