Frank Horvat at the Terme di Caracalla

It being a perfect autumnal morning, with warm sunshine, blue skies, and just a touch of freshness in the air, we took ourselves off to the Terme di Caracalla for a Cultural Quickie®. The primary purpose was an exhibit of photos by Frank Horvat but the ruins of the baths are themselves always worth a visit. The Terme has a unique approach to photo shows, mounting large prints, made specifically I’m sure, on both sides of a free-standing transparent block of plastic. How they stand the heat, I do not know, but the overall effect I find very pleasing. The images themselves were fascinating, and, like Gaul, divided into three parts. One arose from a commission to visit Sicily and capture some of the places that Goethe memorialised in his Italian Journey. Having been to many of those places myself, I was absolutely entranced by how Horvat had captured the essence of the views and how well they illustrated the Goethe quotations. I found myself wondering whether he had been given a very…