Bramley Apple

Room 9.

Added 2025-10-18 07:32:01 +0000 UTC

Back in the Ex Manicomio di Monbello with Maria for this Monochrome Saturday.
She was tired after over 4 hours shooting and exploring the place, so she told me this was the last corner we were going to shoot.
A very dark corner indeed, but I really wanted to take a picture of my model with this door, because it is a symbol of what this place has been whilst it was open.
It was one of the most important asylum in Italy, famous for having a son of Mussolini among the patients.
A sad place, with many ghosts and suffering still lingering in these rooms, and what I found so interesting was that this door is still showing the room number and the 4 names of the last people to occupy it.
You can see the paper label on the peeling paint on the top of the picture.
The Leica M10 Monochrome was the perfect camera to capture this dense atmosphere in the feeble available light (shot at 12500 ISO + another stop pushed in Lightroom) and I wanted to try various combinations for this last sequence before wrapping up our shooting.
On Patreon I'm showing you the first picture from this sequence, where I left the door open to give more depth and a view inside the room.
On regular social media feed I will post the second to last photo, where I decided to close the door, to let people concentrate on Maria alone, centered in the window created by the missing panel.
I love how the noise produced by the Monochrome sensor looks more like film grain, with no digital artifacts, even when pushed so high on the ISO ranges.
The BW from this camera is really something special.

Let me know in comments which of the two photos you prefer.

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