Just before Sooney and I headed off to Borneo to begin our overseas teaching career, my parents asked me to join them on a trip to Italy and Hungary to connect with our aging relatives and meet the younger members of the families. Both my parents were skilled in the language of their parents (Hungarian for my mother, Italian for my father). While in Italy, we rendezvoused with my sister, Julianne, and her husband Ray who were living in Rapallo, Italy, where he worked with an Italian Chiropractic firm. We met them in our family’s village of Villa Viani, located in the province of Liguria and just up the road from the coastal town of Porto Maurizio and Imperia/Oneglia on the Italian Riviera. Here’s a map of the region.
We had earlier visited our relatives in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled with a cousin to the university city of Pecs to sample the famous dark, rich “ox-blood” wine (Szekszárdi Vörös). Yum.
I photographed the entire adventure in black & white, and have begun scanning the negatives in high-resolution files to share with family members. So far, these scans have been sent to cousins in Budapest and to 2 of our Italian cousins. The response has been wonderful, and it gives me great pleasure to revisit both the trip and the photographs that resulted there.
Something to consider when revisiting ancient negatives and slides is how to properly digitize them. I’ve been doing this for some time, and wrote an essay about my my research. Here’s a link to the article.