Hundreds of small flames. Thousands of private stories. At the Shrine of St. Jude, New Orleans.
Jeff Curto
@jeffcurto.bsky.social
Photographer • Educator • Storyteller Passionate about creativity, human connection, and the inspiration found in remarkable places. Sharing my experiences by leading immersive photography workshops in Italy. https://linktr.ee/jeffcurto
Perfect light in Venice is overrated. A rainy day slows the pace just enough that movement becomes visible. People hurry, but the water listens, and the city keeps floating exactly as it always has. #RainyVenice #CanalReflections #AtmosphericPhotography #PhotographyOfPlace
New this week on At Home in Time: I went looking for texture in Neapolitan walls and found much more. Walls that hold traces of faith, football, politics, romance, loss, and everyday life - posters pasted over posters, graffiti crossing older graffiti, repairs added whenever they were needed.
The City Writes on Itself
Naples in Layers
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For Cortona’s Gruppo Storico sbandieratori, motion is the whole point. Performing in defiance of gravity and stillness, they create intricate displays rooted in centuries of neighborhood pride. The blur isn’t a mistake of the shutter – it’s the subject. Watching them, the past becomes present again.
Venice is always in motion. Slow motion. Boats pass. Conversations continue. Blue hour settles quietly over the canal. Stand in one place long enough, and the city reveals how it moves.
This week on At Home in Time: For decades I’ve photographed Italian fountains — not just for the sculpture, but for something less tangible: the sound and movement that shape a piazza. This week I write about gravity, change, permanence and the collaboration between stone and water. Read it here:
Fountains
We often notice an Italian fountain before we see it.
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Matera has been inhabited for nine thousand years, and almost nothing has been erased. New photographs and thoughts from a decade of visits, this week on At Home in Time.
Almost Nothing Has Been Erased
What nine thousand years leave behind
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Summer in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula doesn’t return as stories – it returns as sensations. Cedar in the sun. A screen door spring. A berry dropping into a coffee can. Part 8 of my Solitude of Being series is about the season I carry with me when I leave.
Keweenaw – The Solitude of Being
Part 8: The Season I Carry
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One of my favorite parts of these workshops is introducing people not just to Tuscany, but to the Tuscany I’ve come to know through daily life. This year’s group embraced it all with curiosity, generosity, and creativity. Thank you for letting me share my Cortona with you. View their slideshows:
2026 Tuscany Workshop Student Slideshows | PhotographItaly
The ancient hill town of Cortona treated this great group to a string of warm days and crisp, clear nights—the kind of weather that makes late spring in
photographitaly.com
For the first time since starting my Italy Photography Workshops in 2009, I finally led a workshop in Naples and the Amalfi Coast! Check out the work that my fantastic inaugural group did in this alternately chaotic and sublime area of southern Italy.
2026 Naples & Amalfi Coast Workshop | PhotographItaly
What a week! Incredible weather, tremendously diverse places and wonderful ways of thinking about the way photography can interpret place, emotion and
photographitaly.com
In Sicilian light, a beige wall becomes the color of an apricot pit by three in the afternoon. Shadow isn’t black – it’s violet, or oxidized green. Nothing is one color and everything is in conversation. New post on At Home in Time – Color Out of Shadow.
Color Out of Shadow
In Sicilian light, color isn't described — it's constructed
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There are places that become familiar enough that you stop expecting revelation from them. And yet Cortona keeps shifting under the light. The eighth installment of Cortona Passeggiata is up. Read it here:
Cortona Passeggiata – Ottavo
Photographs from my walks around Cortona, Tuscany (number 8)
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Sicily has its own light – a working light. It cuts. It draws. Shadows become objects in their own right. A new post on photographing where the sun does half the architectural work for you. 👇
A Working Light
Sicily, where shadow has shape
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Venice rewards those who slow down. Step away from the crowds and the noise drops. The canals go still enough to hold the whole city upside down – brick, shutters, sky. Reflection is Venice’s quiet trick. The city doubles itself in water that barely moves.
In the late 1970s, I memorized a slide for an art history exam: Fra Angelico. Annunciation. Cortona. Around 1433. Cortona might as well have been fictional then. Now I live a five-minute walk from the painting. New on Substack – on how information becomes experience.
Five Minutes from Fra Angelico
How an art history slide became part of daily life
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Venice rearranges itself every few seconds. Walls bend, windows dissolve, entire buildings become color and line. Looking down instead of up, the city feels less fixed, more like memory than architecture. Photography, for me, is the act of noticing these brief alignments before they disappear again.
My latest Substack post explores sculpture, shadow, fragments, and the quiet physical presence that lingers in Rome’s streets and courtyards long after history turns into atmosphere.
Rome, In the Presence of Stone
Figures, fragments, and attention over time
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Last chance to sharpen your photography skills in Tuscany this June. Registration for my workshop closes April 30 - just one spot remains.
Italy Photography Workshops - Tuscany: Layers of History | PhotographItaly
– Italy photography workshops • 2026
photographitaly.com
In Naples, Maradona never left. Gods fade on plaster walls, life moves past in motion blur, carrying red shopping bags and holding small hands. But Diego stays – watching over the alleys that made him immortal. I can’t wait to lead my Naples workshop group through these textured streets in May.
New Substack post – Rome, in Light. Light in Rome doesn’t just describe form. It explains it. Makes edges legible. Slows the act of looking just enough to let structure emerge. The city stays still. The light keeps moving. jeffcurto.substack.com/p/rome-in-light
Rome, in Light
Color, shadow, and the way form is revealed
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My latest Substack post looks beyond the spectacle of Siena – into the quieter spaces where the city holds its memory.
Siena: Between Stone and Ritual
History, symbols, and the quieter spaces in between
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Collegiata dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta - San Quirico d’Orcia, Toscana - one of the quiet, out of the way places we visit during my workshops. One space has opened in my Tuscany Photography Workshop — May 31 through June 7, 2026. www.photographitaly.com/workshops/tu... 🇮🇹 #photographitaly #tuscany
Light. Shadow. Stone. The streets of Tuscany’s hill towns are a constantly unfolding revelation. One space has opened in my Tuscany Photography Workshop — May 31 through June 7, 2026. www.photographitaly.com/workshops/tu... 🇮🇹 #photographitaly #tuscany #cortona #photographyworkshop #learnphotography
One space has opened in my Tuscany photography workshop May 31 - June 7, 2026. One week to slow down, look closely, photograph the streets, the light, the details that most people walk right past. 🇮🇹 www.photographitaly.com/workshops/tu... #tuscanyworkshop #photographyworkshop #italyphotography
One space just opened up for my June Tuscany workshop. Join me in my Italian hometown for a great week of photography.
Tuscany: Layers of History – May 31 to June 7, 2026 | Italy Photography Workshops with Jeff Curto
Tuscany: Layers of History May 31 to June 7, 2026 There are few places on earth like Tuscany. Its landscape was painted by the great artists of the Renaissance. Its architecture is known for its sense...
photographitaly.com
Cortona Passeggiata – Settima My latest Substack post is the 7th in a series about my home-away-from-home of Cortona, Tuscany. I’m not there in these days, but looking forward to being back in the warmth of my adopted Tuscan home town.
Cortona Passeggiata – Settima
Photographs from my walks around Cortona, Tuscany (number 7)
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My latest Substack post is Keweenaw – The Solitude of Being. Here, in winter, I look at ice and how the cold on the shore of Lake Superior reshapes everything before it ever fully freezes it.
Keweenaw – The Solitude of Being
Part 5: Cold Light
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My latest Substack post - Rome, seen through windows – glass, shadow, reflections, and the small negotiations between inside and outside. This set came from slowing down and letting the city arrive in fragments rather than scenes.
Rome, Through Windows
Thresholds, distance, and the spaces between
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The Umbrian town of Orvieto sits high and a little apart. What stays with me is the balance between the monumental and the everyday, how easily they coexist here. These photographs and thoughts in my most recent Substack post come from walking slowly and feeling the shift from arrival to intention.
Striped Stone, Quiet Streets
Walking Orvieto
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Winter has me thinking forward – to spring workshops, to Sorrento, to the languid calm of the Bay of Naples. The views, the air, the stillness of a cloister in the middle of the day. Some places warm you long before you arrive.
