"France is not Italy!" takes us on a visual journey of the French and Italian Riviera where we explore the cultural landscape of this historic and artistically influential region.



The photo story begins in France exploring the coastal towns of Nice, Cannes, Antibes and Villefrance-sur-Mer. We briefly explore Monte Carlo on the road to Italy. In Italy our journey takes us into small coastal towns of Ventimiglia and Vallecrosia then to the popular tourist destination of Santa Margherita, Rapallo, Portofino. We also explore major monuments of the Catholic Church in Pisa and Milan.



Beautiful panoramic landscapes set the scene for each location. Culture is captured through candid street photography in markets and shopping districts surrounding churches in the historic center of the city. The photographs contrast attitude and lifestyle influenced by history in each destination.



Although, this book might be considered a travel book, each photograph had to qualify as a fine art photograph for inclusion in the book. During the editing process, a very good photograph would be eliminated it was too similar to another, artistically stronger image. Next the images were sequenced to tell a story about the people and places - this involved further editing out of good photographs that didn't suit the story sequence or color pallet. The result of this stringent editing process is a collection of interesting photographs that each tell a story themself and a photostory that is visually stimulating to read as a body of work.



The author provides a brief introduction to the book, however, there is no textual storyline. The reader is given subtle clues to the author's interpretation of the storyline by the titles of the photograhs and he leaves the interpretation of the story to the reader through his/her ability to relate to the images.