VC1 | Morning Slowness in Coreglia

The regional train climbing from Lucca into the Garfagnana moved like someone who knew they had all the time in the world. Every bend was an invitation to linger, every slowdown a pause for the landscape to slip into the eyes. The Americans looked out the window like children on their first day of school: wheat fields, mossy stone walls, and chickens casually pecking along the tracks.

There were seven of them, strangers until the day before, united by a single letter received months ago: "Large format photography course, Tuscany. A journey to learn how to see." No further details. Just a name: Matteo Castelli, photographer.

Miriam, 26, from Portland, worked in a bookstore and collected slow things: vinyl records, handwritten letters, the patient hiss of a moka pot. John, 57, taught botany in Colorado, photographed only plants in black and white, and had never touched a computer. Clara from New Mexico, a former war reporter, now silent as undeveloped film. Marcus, an architect from Chicago; Tanya, a student of anthropology; David, a jazz-voiced retiree from Boston; and Lex, mysterious, wearing a black coat even in August.

The train stopped at the small station of Ghivizzano-Coreglia. Matteo was waiting: tall, unkempt, in a corduroy jacket, with a gaze that seemed to have already photographed each of them. He didn’t greet them right away. He watched their suitcases, their steps, their breathing.

“You’ve come to learn how to see,” he finally said. “So we begin with silence.”

They loaded into a blue van that climbed toward Coreglia Antelminelli, a hill town suspended 800 meters high between green slopes and drifting fog. The streets were narrow, built for hooves rather than wheels, and every corner held a blooming window or an ancient fountain still dripping.

They were hosted in an old stone house, with terracotta floors and walls lined with photographs in rough wood frames: a chair under the rain, a backlit plowed field, the profile of a face in an osteria window. None were signed.

The next morning, under a shaded loggia at the edge of town, Matteo unfolded the large format camera like a musical instrument: the leather bellows, the glass ground screen, the gleaming knobs.

“This isn’t a tool,” he said. “It’s a window. But to see through it, you have to empty your eyes first.”

Then he gave them their task: assemble the camera, choose a frame, and wait.

“Don’t go looking for your subject. Let it find you.”

For three hours, nothing happened. And yet, each of them began to see.

Miriam noticed how the light changed tone with every passing cloud. John saw how the fig leaves behind the fountain trembled differently with each breeze. Clara watched a cat walk a wall and vanish. Marcus traced the rooflines and began mentally drafting a new building made of shadows. Tanya wrote in her notebook: “Time doesn’t pass. It widens.” David fell asleep, dreaming of perfect exposures. Lex remained still, eyes fixed through the ground glass. When he finally took his shot, no one noticed.

They each took only one photo. One single negative. But in that image was something they hadn’t known they were looking for: a silence made of space, air, and slowness. The echo of an invisible presence.

Matteo watched them quietly. He didn’t say if they had done well or not. He simply nodded.

“You’ve begun.”

And with those words, he led them across the unseen threshold of vision.