In Under the Arch, Taormina (1997), the woman poised to cross the street appears frozen in time and space. Not only is the woman compositionally embedded into layers of overlapping planes, but the surface textures of the old walls and the markings of the traffic crossing register the cohabitation of the past within the present.

This photograph also suggests that reality is itself a construction: the windows of the building to the left are painted rather than real and the woman herself has the look of another era in her refined presentation.

Direct references to Sicily’s ancient past, and to mortality and memory in general, are evident in other photographs that veer Coyne’s project in a more pensive direction. Her interpretations of ancient ruins are emptied of contemporary people, and Greco-Roman Ruins,Solunto(second in the series)(2001)especially, evokes multiple readings about the transience of life, the erosion of human monuments as well as the relationship of past and present.

Without sentimentality, Convento Dei Cappucini, Palermo (1997)brings us close to the preserved bodies of deceased citizens in a catacomb.

The inclusion of such images taps into photography’s long-term preoccupation with remembering and memorialization.

Simultaneously, they highlight the peculiar nature of making pictures on a journey like Coyne’s.

After all, it can be an unsettling as well as a gratifying experience to recognize familiar-looking physiognomies, and yet, to not speak their language. What does it mean to ‘return’ to the home of one ’s ancestors but not to your own home?

This interpretation of Coyne’s work lies just under the surface of her photographs. Nevertheless, read in this way, her Sicilian Journey negotiates the uncanny experience, lived by every visitor like her,of returning to places and people,both familiar and inevitably unknown.