Quiet Moments Across Italy
Storyteller: James Ashby, United Kingdom
James Ashby is a photographer drawn to the kind of moments that exist at the edges of a journey, easy to miss yet impossible to forget. His work is unhurried and deeply observant, shaped by a belief that authentic experience is worth preserving. His Moleskine Photo Book, Tutto Passa, documents travels across Italy with the eye of someone who understands that the most meaningful images are rarely planned. Read his words below.
What format did you choose to make your keepsake and why?
The Moleskine Photo Book - Because it serves as a revival of the books which attended to the needs of many a great writer and artist. Hemingway, Chatwin, Wilde, and all of the others. There is a beautiful quality and legacy to these notebooks, which stirs within you the desire to create something of a profound nature.
Why did you create your keepsake?
There is a significant and mounting weight to be placed upon the creation of something tangible in an era of ever increasing digital noise. The ubiquity of artificial images we have seen in recent years will only continue to batter us, leaving us yearning for something real. We cannot abandon the warmth of authentic connection and experience for the ease of the artificial. Without going outside and creating real things of material beauty, we may as well be sat writing spreadsheets at a desk in the hollowest of places.
What is your favorite image from your keepsake?
The image affixed to the front cover, of the children playing in front of the Castello Aragonese, Ischia. It captures the freedom of the Italian spirit. An elusive and ungraspable innocence of a place you never really return from.
What is your favorite story behind a single shot in the book?
The same image. We had just been robbed in rome. After a rather complex and lengthy encounter with the Italian police, sprinting through Roma Termini to make the last train, cutting it even finer on the ferry to Ischia. Entirely exhausted, descending the steps along Spiaggia dei Pescatori, the scene in the photograph laid bare before us. Bask in the sunlight, be shattered on the rocks.
What does your keepsake mean to you?
Above all, in my opinion, photography of this kind is about capturing what you’re afraid to lose. The phrase Tutto Passa, which serves as the title of the collection, a phrase carved into the manner of Italian living and etched into the skin of the men and women on the shores of Napoli. A sacred phrase which translated means that inevitably, everything passes. It lays out the impermanence and frailty of the human condition. Ultimately, time is the currency of life. Seizing, rendering, and savouring time is the essence of this keepsake.
What inspires you creatively?
I was working in a factory when I took these photos. Bukowski described this time as a murdering of his years. A slow hemorrhaging of the soul. Through squandered days of purgatory spent amongst the chorus of indifferent machines, you owe a debt to yourself to resist surrendering to the misery of the mundane. To see your dreams articulated and retain the spark of creativity. As Bukowski once said in one of my fondest poems, ‘A spark can set a whole forest on fire.’
What bit of advice would you offer to someone creating their own MILK memento?
There is something intrinsic to the soft body of a mortal being which can only be born from a lived experience. This is the art of noticing. The innately human quality of cherishing the mundane and the beautiful with equal admiration and attention. The electronic dust of Artificial Intelligence could never replicate this, something which deserves to be articulated and manifested in physical form. Artificial Intelligence only highlights the immense joy and privilege of being human, and being able to create something like this with your own hands which will endure. This is my advice, to create with passion and find joy in your creation, even if it is not perfect to you, it’s yours.
Tutto Passa is a prime example of the power of creating something tangible, a book that outlasts the moment it captures and holds onto the small details that may otherwise fade. We asked James to share the story behind it, and the thinking that shaped its pages. If it’s inspired you to preserve your own moments, our Design Studio is there to help you begin.