We all have dreams. Ten years ago, fed up with my life I dreamt of better things, more excitement, a career I was passionate about, adventure and most of all of meeting someone I loved. I resisted change as long as I could until Christmas 1999 when I won the 'client of the year' from my local Thai take-away. Can you believe it, I had eaten more Thai take-away than any other person in my precinct! I was mortfied, single, lonely and dissatisfied. That Christmas present was proof my life was passing me by.
In the space of a month, I left my job, my apartment and packed my bags for Italy not knowing what was going to happen.
Much has happened, I have been giving more happiness than one girl deserves. I became a photographer, I live and breathe this passion day in and day out. I have lived in Florence and now Paris and eight years ago I found the love of my life, a beautiful Italian named Francesco, who is just as wonderful today as the day I met him.
Ten years have passed and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't thank the gods for giving me the courage to go (or for sending me that present). I can't imagine living any other way.
To celebrate my ten year anniversary of surviving (and flourishing) this career/life/country/menu swap I would love to
give-away five copies of
Italian Joy (which is a photo journal recording the years when I thought it was all over, only to discover it was just beginning, mixed with the joys of living in Italy).
Do you have a dream? Just a leave me a note in as many words a you want with your dream and on August 16th I will draw the lucky winners.
For the curious ones, this is the introduction to Italian Joy. Have a great summer. Carla x
Italian Joy - IntroductionI had it all. Well, that’s what everybody told me. A small art deco apartment in Darlinghurst, Sydney, filled with beautiful objects: a Murano chandelier from Venice (Italy), a handmade vase from Bahia, chairs from Copenhagen and rugs handmade in Rajasthan. My wardrobe was overflowing with beaded silk dresses by Collette Dinnigan, ruched leather stilettos by Gucci and clothes that looked more like Art by Akira. Fresh flowers were delivered on Mondays; and on Tuesdays the cleaner let herself in and put my 55 square metres back into perfect order, leaving my washing neatly folded and ironed on my bed. My successful business of thirteen years afforded me trips to exotic locations around the world to collect even more beautiful possessions for my home.
Sounds good on paper, but in reality I felt like just another invisible female fast approaching my ‘use-by date’ in a city that worships youth. My male peers were dating girls who were celebrating their twenty-first birthday, and the hope that Mr Right would save me from the burden of doing it all on my own was fading. I was a 35-year-old woman still taking the rubbish out on my own, changing my own light bulbs, paying my own mortgage and arriving at family functions without the ‘family’. My weekends were kept busy with endless shopping trips to fill my already overflowing wardrobe and the void that normally would be satisfied with love. As I arrived home from work late at night, I began to dread the idea of entering my empty apartment with just an answering machine full of messages and Thai takeaway for one.
Christmas 2000 was almost upon us, and one by one my single friends were pairing up and moving on. While their letterboxes were filling with Christmas cards from Barbeques Galore and Babyco, mine was filling with takeaway menus. If food equals love then I’d deduced that my soul was dead: takeaway coffee in cardboard cups and soulless dinners for one prepared by nameless chefs in nondescript restaurants. The closest I had come to any kind of relationship of late was with my local Thai delivery boy, who knew me by order: Ms Tofu stir fry and vegetables (hold the oil).
As the levels of joy in everyone around me soared as Christmas neared, mine were plummeting. The idea of fronting up to yet another family Christmas alone, and a New Year on the way that looked like being the same as the one that was almost over, was just a painful reminder of what my life hadn’t become. As I opened my Thai takeaway on Christmas Eve, there among the plastic was a small wrapped gift. As the most valued client of my local Thai takeaway, I had been given a silver jewellery box and a 2001 takeaway menu laminated for my fridge. I was mortified; I had never felt so lost and lonely.
There’s a turning point in everyone’s life, and that silver jewellery box was mine. It was a reminder that life was passing me by. Every late night, every failed relationship, every childhood dream of what life would be and the fear that the woman inside me was slowly dying, was magnified by that Christmas gift sitting on my coffee table staring back at me. I realised in that moment that I could stay living a life that looked good only from the outside, or break out and find what it was in life I was searching for. Images of meetings with middle-aged marketing managers danced before my eyes, and the concept of another thirteen years in small, grey city offices seemed inconceivable. It was over. My friends cheered me on when I rented out my apartment, put my life in storage, sold my business, packed two suitcases and my second-hand Nikon and headed for Italy.
Italy had always held a place in my heart, since my days as a backpacking twenty-year-old. I will never forget the feeling of awe as I exited the train station at Venice and clapped my eyes on the Grand Canal, the emerald water and the faded palaces, with the musical Italian language surrounding me. Or the image of thousands of flickering candles held towards the sky at the encore of the opera Aida in the ancient Roman theatre in Verona. To me, over the years it was only natural to return and pass holidays in Florence, Rome and Venice, listening to that language I always dreamed of learning.
Italy was to be my first port of call but ended up my final destination. After years of being weighed down by possessions, I’d thought long and hard about what was important to me out of all the beautiful objects I had accumulated. It was easy! The photographs stuck to my fridge: nieces, nephews, birthdays, laughter, tears, parties, weddings, graduations and the emotions of life captured forever. They were the only objects I unpacked when I arrived at Popi’s house in Florence.
I met Popi while I was searching for an apartment. It was August and Florence was unbearably hot. My Italian-language classmate, Piotr, extolled the virtues of a woman named Popi, who for twenty-five years had opened her house to students from around the world. Piotr told me he was living in a house ‘like paradise’ with five other students, and encouraged me to move in. Being a one-bedroom-apartment girl, I seriously doubted my abilities to cohabit with that many.
I soon discovered, however, that Popi was everything Piotr said; an eccentric Italian mamma filled to the brim with Mediterranean fervour and generosity. I learned to love pushing open her front door at the end of each day to be greeted the scents of cooking, like I did all those years ago when I was just a skinny teenager growing up in mudgee. I began to meander through the medieval streets between the cathedral and Piazza Beccaria on my way home, each day discovering something new. When I needed a little more open space, I would follow the course of the river Arno from the Ponte Vecchio, passing Ponte alle Grazie and Ponte San Niccolò as I watched the rowers practise on the river.
I enrolled in a photography course and practised my Italian at home every morning over coffee and brioche, the light streaming into the kitchen from the terrazzo (terrace). I paid two weeks’ rent in advance and stayed for two years.
Florence became my playground, Piazza Signoria and the fontana di as familiar as Bondi Beach and its rolling waves. Cellini’s Perseo, proudly holding the head of Medusa, winked at me as I made my way home at night. The spontaneity of Italian life seduced me. Nothing was planned ahead, it just happened; coffee in the piazza, aperitivi with friends, summer evenings listening to string quartets in the piazza, and sojourns to Naples, Venice, Positano or wherever the whim or Trenitalia would take me.
I dreamed I was Annie Leibowitz by day and Audrey Hepburn by night; to me, Sydney became merely the name of a great actor from the 1960s. Life was simple and lived at a new pace. I bought a bicycle (with a small basket attached) for transport, I took la passeggiata (evening strolls) through Florence’s ancient city streets at night and enjoyed endless dinners and conversation wrapped together under the soft light that illuminated Popi’s table. Each day became an adventure, ordering a spremuta di arancia (fresh orange juice) or a tramezzino (sandwich) a challenge. Going to school again after all those years of working in an office was exhilarating; almost anything felt possible.
The first year passed slowly. I savoured the sunshine on my back, the afternoon music along the Arno, the heavenly food that Popi prepared every night and the myriad of handsome men that called ‘Ciao bella!’ or offered me a caffè as I walked by.
I traded my second-hand Nikon for my pride and joy: a robust black Leica (the Manolo Blahnik of cameras). My sojourns to Naples, Positano and Venice became photo stories and I had found my calling. My camera opened up a life about which I had only ever fantasised. A life filled with people, excitement, passion and exuberant discussions without an end.
At times I couldn’t help but wonder who I thought I was to become a photographer in a strange country, with a new language and without any help. I went to London and knocked on the doors of as many magazines as possible; I took the train to Milan overcome with nervous anxiety at the thought of selling myself in Italian; and I canvassed Australian magazines when I was home at Christmas. Then, one day, a single, slow tear slid down my cheek when I read that first email from marie claire magazine with the magic words – ‘We like it’ – and the dream I had held back all those years started to come true. Slowly, my photos and stories were published, and photography became not only my passion but my career.
There’s a time and place for everything in life, and after two years and eight ‘seasons’ of the finest food I have ever eaten, my time came to create the next part of my life. Popi didn’t say goodbye, just ‘A presto’ (See you soon), and she refused to take back the keys to her front door. ‘casa mia è casa tua; vieni quando vuoi’ (My house is your house; come whenever you want) were her parting words.
I found a small apartment on Via Maggio in the heart of Oltrarno (Oltrarno literally means ‘over the Arno river’), between Piazza Santo Spirito and Palazzo Pitti. I knew the minute I put the key in the door that this would be my new home. Like most of the buildings on Via Maggio, mine was built in the sixteenth century, and climbing the stairs was a better workout than any aerobics class could offer. My apartment is one giant room with a beautiful exposed wooden-beam ceiling, and came furnished in Florentine style. There is no minimalist designer furniture or avant-garde art, but I love it just the same. My large bed is covered in white (the original Florentine Medusa faces had to go), a pull-out sofa (for all my friends to come and stay) and a big wooden Tuscan table surrounded by six chairs thatched with straw. The fake Botticellis came down and the all-white walls became the perfect backdrop for a giant collage of my favourite photos and faces.
A soft light infuses my apartment and the window looks out into a cortile (courtyard) and into the lives of my neighbours. When I first moved in and one of my neighbours would call across the cortile to my neighbour Marco, and Marco would stick his head out the window and engage in an hour-long conversation, I felt like I was intruding into their lives. Now, the chatter, the scents of the evening meal and the occasional over-the-top scene of an angry woman hurling her cheating husband’s clothes from the second floor on to bikes and clothes drying below, screaming, ‘Sporco bastardo!’ (Dirty bastard!) has become part of my life in Italy.
Since the day I left Sydney and my comfortable life, many things have changed. I’m up the back of the bus more often than the front of the plane. Paying the rent has become a challenge instead of an Internet transfer. Time has a new meaning, and words such as ‘speed dial’, ‘takeaway’ and ‘mortgage’ are from someone else’s language. And that woman who was dying inside is alive and well, living a rich tapestry of moments and emotions she always expected and hoped life could be.
Copyright Carla Coulson
All images from Italian Joy
I shot this 'red' fashion story in the grounds of Palazzo della Gherardesca which is now the Four Seasons Hotel in Florence. This park is breathtaking once the grounds of the home of the Florentine Gherardesca family, boasting four hundred year old trees. I shot all the images in the shade using a simple reflector for a little separation from the background. The original greens were overpowering so i literally 'gassed' them in photoshop. Firstly I separated the model and the background working on layers. Using a bleach-by-pass plug-in in photoshop, I repeated the process over and over again working on the 'greens' till I had almost a grey effect. I wanted my summers day to have a wintery feel. I then worked on the model trying to keep a nice skin colour and not strip too much colour out of the clothes. All shot using 50mm and 35mm Leica Lens on my Leica M8. Fashion editor was the talented Florentine Marta Innocenti Ciulli. 
Hi folks, I am feeling a little nostalgic tonight as tomorrow a group show in which I am participating opens in Perth and I unfortunately will be here in Paris. Time travel would be a wonderful solution!
For all lovers of photography. We hope those of you in Perth can make it to our Opening Night on Friday 7th May from 5.30pm till 7.30pm. Carla x 
Untitled #2 Moulin Rouge from Series 'Sotto Voce' Carla Coulson 
Image Nicole Boenig-McGrade
