What the photos tell

I sent a disk of photos of Venice to Atlanta. She wrote back to thank me and observed that in none of them are there any people. Is Venice that completely deserted? she asked. The answer is, of course, that no, it isn’t entirely deserted. There are parts which constantly swarm with people – especially on weekends, and especially in the summer, tourists, mainly. And while there are swathes of the city which are not densely populated – most buildings in them having been abandoned; or merely boarded up during the absence of their absentee owners; there are small pockets which are lively with real, untouristic life: like Campo Santa Margherita, the favorite watering place for the students, or Campo dell’Orio where hoards of kids always ride bicycles and play ball. I do not avoid these areas. In fact both are my favorite places for a midmorning aperitif.

But Atlanta is right: there is something about my photography which studiously avoids people. And not only, perhaps, because I do not wish to intrude upon people by surreptitiously stealing their images. Rather, I suspect, I prefer an indirect study of mankind. As I looked at the photos again this morning, I noticed that a certain theme repeated among them, not so frequently as to be obvious, but precisely because of its infrequence, telling. They were photos of shadows or reflections of passers by on buildings, or pavements, or water. I suppose photographing buildings and art works is really in the same vein: it is photographing the shadows cast by men who have passed away. An attempt to reconstruct them, or perhaps rather, to construct imaginary constructs of them, life-like and convincing, but which could be like them, or not: their exact verisimilitude does not seem to me of much interest. It is thus that an artist like Givanni Bellini seems closer to me than my neighbor; and his saints more interesting than any living person.