Venice, the living city

To write about, photograph, draw or even talk about Venice to anyone turns into an exercise in not doing it via tired metaphors or cliches. It has to be one of the most (over) visited places on the planet, and in many ways it does suffer from the swathes of selfie stick carrying tourists that disgorge from the skyscraper like cruise liners that dock there. They flock to the hot spots like St Marks Square and the Rialto Bridge but, and this is a pretty big but, you will find your own bit or part of Venice. It’ll be in a corner of a small piazza or maybe a little used humped back bridge as it jumps over a narrow canal into a dark passageway somewhere, but there will be some point when you’ll be the only person there and that will be your Venice. It’s also a place that returning to provides a new perspective, and you’ll figure out that despite the throngs of humanity it is beautiful anyway and all those cliches and metaphors are entirely relevant and should be used primarily as it was probably here they were used first.

Venice's mere existence is down to tenacity and luck, when refugees fleeing persecution from the Romans 2000 years ago had no choice but to adapt, live and build on the saline marshes inside the lagoon that protects Venice now. It was literally a safe haven for them, providing food, shelter and vitally a place for a harbor, which over the next 1000 years became probably the most important city in the western world and a key-stone for trade of all sorts between Europe and the far east. Anything that was valuable came through Venice. Spices, silks, treasure and knowledge either started or finished their journeys here, all helping to build the Venetian Empire one of the most important ever. The legacy is all around from the architecture and art to the very design and makeup of the city. Look up the Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge and you’ll glimpse a world painted by Canaletto in the 18th century, and the Rialto market is essentially the same place described in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. In essence little has changed. Venice still a melting pot of cultures drawn to the markets and sights of this city from all over the world. Only now it’s trade is itself exchanging that Venician experience for hard cash rather than the silks, spices and treasure.

For me though as a photographer it’s the detail that describes Venice. The texture and colour of the buildings that wrap you up and warm you as you stroll round aimlessly in the labyrinth of passageways and alleys. Around any corner vignettes describe tiny facets of Venice which all together make up a mosaic of a much greater thing, something that is a testament and an example of what man can achieve.