THE DARKROOMColonel Baldassare Rossi was especially known among the idle, frivolous members of colonial society for his passion for photography. He would rest his camera on a wooden tripod. He didn’t take photographs on the spot, but rather focused on shooting well-prepared scenes – like those pictures of public ceremonies taken by official licensed photographers, or slightly morbid portraits, ones where the subjects’ heads were encircled by a milky or sulphurous halo. Whenever he was wholly engrossed by his work, he would give orders with irritated severity: he appeared to want to bend the will of others and present his camera with his model’s inert remains.
His portraits were anything but inert or monotonous: his array of pictures featured all imaginable kinds of moods and personalities
