Wherever you go in Rome, countless others have gone before you. Everything has been seen, done, or sought by somebody else. The streets are made of stones that are broken before they are put in place. There’s not a church, palazzo, piazza, or staircase in the centro storico that hasn’t been rendered by a succession of ace photographers working with state-of-the-art gear—and by centuries of open-air painters before them. The only way to make things new with a camera in Rome, then, is to be fully present in the given moment, which is ipso facto unprecedented. You’re in a piazza with an old-school camera around your neck. A horse trots up right in front of you, so that its head—nose and neck, harness and reins—frames a young man and woman nuzzling on the steps of a fountain. The man has his legs around her, as if he’s pinning her in a romantic pose. There before your eyes is a moment in Rome: edgy, hard to read, unrepeatable. You focus and shoot, and then it’s gone. The city’s heavy history can be a source of freedom—the freedom to see the place in the here and now, since there’s no other way.