Between LightGallery 4 · East Wing02 / 06
Black and white photograph looking up a narrow Roman street with laundry lines strung between old buildings.
Black and white photograph looking up a narrow Roman street with laundry lines strung between old buildings.

Stop 2 · Audio guide

Laundry, Via dei Coronari

Tomaso Ricci,

Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
30 × 40 cm

Guide transcript

Tomaso Ricci spent his life photographing a single neighbourhood in Rome. Here he tilts his camera upward, into the narrow slice of sky above Via dei Coronari. Sheets and shirts hang between the windows like flags of everyday life. Notice the diagonal lines of the washing: they pull your eye from the bottom left corner all the way to the bright gap at the top. Ricci rarely photographed people directly. Instead, he believed that what we leave behind, our laundry, our open shutters, tells a more honest story about who we are.