Courtesy of © Daylight Records To be birthed and reared in one of the world’s great cities is both a boon and a misfortune. A boon because - well, that’s fairly apparent. The misfortune lies in never seeing your home metropolis with the wide eyes of a suburban or country yokel sucked into its orbit, either for the first time or on a repeat visit. There is one obvious palliative, though, that remains for those suckled at the teat of the world’s great cities who wish to exper

Our fascination with beginnings, with the nascent in art, music, literature, history, etc., is bound up with our obsession with what makes us “us”: if the ego is but a crude sculpture of our past experiences, then those lumps of clay which form its base should hold more than a passing interest. It’s precisely our preoccupation with origin stories that makes ‘The New Tide”, an exhibit of photographer Gordon Parks’ early work showing November 4 - February 18 at the National Ga

Courtesy of © Hope Herman Wurmfeld When photographer Hope Herman Wurmfeld moved from New York City to Rome in early 1964, post-war Italy’s so-called “Economic Miracle” was still taking shape, with companies like Fiat attracting with the promise of gainful employ impoverished occupants of the nation’s heel, arch and toe (and Sicily, the boot’s deflated soccer ball?) to relatively affluent northern cities like Turin and Milan. But while it was a nation swelling with renewed pro