The award winning barganews photographer O’Connor has his own section on barganews – the closely followed Daily Images. It is subtitled “tradition and change in a small community” which pretty much sums up what he has in mind as the core concept to these images. They are meant to be read as a series of images which frees him up from having to produce that “one stunning image” or “the perfect photograph”. He can pop in the odd image that does not have a high visual impact on its own but when read in context with all the others still carries with it a cultural significance and the chance for people to understand slightly more about Barga and the changes that are taking place here.
This morning as he passed through Barga Vecchia he noticed a lorry loaded up with some 5 metre long chestnut beams and followed to see where the beams were being unloaded.
It turns out that they were for a house in Via di Mezzo which is being renovated. It was the house that for many people in the city is still called “Lombo’s house” – the house where Jack Nannini lived.
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Once upon a time all of the houses in this area had floors held up by this type of chestnut beam but as technology moved ahead and concrete and steel became the main building materials, their use became less and less usual. In fact there are now no longer any suppliers in this area of beams of this size – these will have come from well out of the area and at a price. They have moved from being the normal everyday building material to something that only the very rich can now afford.
Jack Nanini was the barganews weather man for many years up until his death in January 2005 after a fall. He was a man with an incredible sense of humour – just look at this article from 16th April 2002 – when Italy had its first general strike for more than 20 years –
The first general strike in more than 20 years in Italy and the barganews weatherman Jack Nannini comes out on strike.
“it’s about time I did something else apart from read the weather” said Jack just before taking off for a hard days play.
Local people are already asking if this will be the turning point in Jack’s long career on barganews.com. There are whispers on the street that maybe he will be the new columnist for youth affairs on barganews.
Jack (born 1919) was unavailable for comment today and calls to his private telephone number were greeted with taped music by The Chemical Brothers.
