When Hope Herman Wurmfeld was 4 years old, she became fascinated by a glass of water that had turned blue with the paint she was using to make art. "It was so beautiful, I just had to drink it," she says of the liquid, which she started to sip before her mother stopped her. That was around 1938.

Some 25 years later, in 1964, she became mesmerized by the beauty she saw around her in Italy on her first trip to Europe and felt compelled to absorb it. "It was like drinking the blue water," she says. This time, though, she didn't drink. Instead, she started photographing what she saw -- women doing chores, men sitting together in a piazza, children playing, ships resting in port, posters hanging on crumbling walls and ancient buildings standing serenely.