Rome Says Goodbye

I made this photograph while walking through Rome on February 28, 2013.

A poster of Pope Benedict XVI hung against an old Roman wall. Beneath his portrait were the words "Rimarrai sempre con noi. Grazie" — "You will always remain with us. Thank you."

What caught my attention was not simply the image of the Pope.

It was where I found it.

The poster had become part of the street itself, hanging against an aging wall beside an ordinary storefront. Inside, life continued as usual.

Yet this was not an ordinary day.

It was the final day of Benedict XVI's papacy.

I raised my camera because it felt as though Rome itself was saying goodbye.

Rome Says Goodbye examines the intersection between historic events and everyday life.

The photograph does not document the transition of the papacy through ceremony, crowds, or monumental architecture. Instead, history appears quietly within the ordinary fabric of the city.

A temporary poster hangs against an ancient wall while a nearby storefront remains open.

The contrast is central to the work.

Institutions change. Leaders depart. Historic moments enter the record.

And around them, everyday life continues.

Curatorially, Rome Says Goodbye is strongest when read through the visual evidence of transition rather than a fixed state. The composition does not require a dramatic event to justify its place in the collection; its meaning develops through relationships inside the frame—distance, scale, structure, atmosphere, and the distribution of visual weight. That restraint is important. It allows the photograph to carry the theme of transformation through form as well as through biography, giving the work an independent visual life while remaining connected to the artist’s experience.

History does not always announce itself with monuments.

Sometimes it appears on a wall.

A handwritten message.

A newspaper left on a table.

A poster thanking someone who is about to leave.

We often imagine historic moments as something separate from ordinary life.

But history happens while stores remain open, people walk home, conversations continue, and cities carry on around it.

Most of those ordinary moments disappear.

Occasionally, a photograph remembers one.

The photograph ultimately raises a question about how meaning changes when a moment is reconsidered from a later vantage point. A camera can hold the appearance of a moment, but it cannot hold the entire experience surrounding it. That limitation gives Rome Says Goodbye much of its power. What is absent is not a flaw to be repaired; it is the space in which memory continues to work. The image remains fixed while the person returning to it does not.

Preserved as the thirty-fifth accessioned photograph in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing, Rome Says Goodbye documents an unusual intersection between public history and everyday urban life.

Created in Rome on February 28, 2013, the final day of the papacy of Benedict XVI, the photograph records the city's response through a temporary street poster rather than through the monumental architecture traditionally associated with Rome and the Vatican.

The work expands the Cities collection by demonstrating how historic transition can become visible through the temporary objects, messages, and gestures embedded within a living city.