Richard Pelletier's Photography Journal

{ writer + photographer }

Black and White Photography

private altar, civita di bagnoregio

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black and white photo of civita di bagnoregio
altar, civita di bagnoregio

richard pelletier https://www.snappysan.com

Civita di Bagnoregio is a hilltown about an hour north of Rome. So beautiful, it’s sacred. Think of a hilltown as a cake that rises from the valley floor. The town sits on top and there are walking paths (now you’re walking along the outside surface of the cake) that wind all the way around and down to the valley floor. On the trail was this private altar which is a kind of cave, carved from the hillside. I shot this from behind a locked steel gate.

“You may have the universe if I may have Italy.” – Verdi

doggie diner

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doggie-diner
doggie diner, san francisco, ca

richard pelletier https://www.snappysan.com

Doggie Diner Designer Died

Harold Bachman, 84, the advertising artist who dreamed up the Doggie Diner heads, died Oct. 1st in Santa Rosa, Ca. In 1965, Bachman sketched the concept for the happy, rotating dachsund head to promote a restaurant, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The roadside icon, which once flourished in the Bay Area and was immortalized in Zippy the Pinhead comic strips, today can only be seen in one public place. In January 2005, a restored Doggie Diner head was added to the median strip of Sloat Boulevard near Ocean Beach in San Francisco. [10/12/2005 roadsideamerica.com]

the anderson valley

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In the Anderson Valley

I don’t know what it is, but the Anderson Valley, which lies north of San Francisco, and about an hour from the Pacific, is some sort of zone of pure magic and incomparable beauty. Whenever I am there, I start to vibrate from the intense and intimate beauty of the place. In the early 80’s I made a series of photographs of a few vineyards and wineries. Memory is fickle; I can’t pinpoint this location.

miyako, san francisco 1978

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miyako tadenuma, san francisco, ca 1978
miyako-san francisco, ca 1978

richard pelletier https://www.snappysan.com

Miyako came to San Francisco in the 1970’s as part of a wave of Japanese women who were emigrating to the States. Many of them, like Miyako, signed up for secretarial school only to find out that the secretarial school was, to a large extent, a sham. Miyako and I lived together for four years – at Alamo Square in San Francisco and then for a period in Oakland.