Venezia Vuoto.
Venezia Vuoto simply translates from Italian as Venice empty, this is the first of my photo essays which will form the main part of my own work for this unit. I shot the images for this project while on a trip to the city of Venice on the east coast of Italy this summer. While there I had in mind a project that portrayed Venice in a different light to that of which it is normally.
To start with Venice one of the largest tourist attractions in Europe with an average of just above 20 million visitors each year, and Venice is most definitely feeling the consequences of this popularity. And in this issue is where Venezia Vuoto grew, with huge overcrowding problems, the fact that Venice is actually sinking at an alarming rate and been deserted by its native venetians at a average of 1,500 residents per year it is not surprising to be used to the general image of a venetian street to be bustling with people and that is the reality when you visit. On this premise I decided to shoot pictures depicting Venice in an empty, quite almost serene state without the crowds of loud tourists or in fact almost anyone. This in itself creates a juxtaposed feel to the images especially if you have been witness to this city for yourself; it is very detached from the Venice that is generally witnessed, (Venice doesn’t go with empty streets????)
The idea and the issue behind this project is that there is far too many visitors each year to Venice and while it provides a living for many of the residents of the city the tourism industry is slowly destroying this historic and beautiful city.
To capture these images I had to be out on the streets when no one else was this meant early rises and a lack of sleep as my short trip only allowed my a few short days of shooting and for much of that the streets were far too busy (normal) to get the shots I needed for this project. This short window of opportunity however did force me to be precise and much more thoughtful with my shots, to add to this for a large part of the time I shot using film in a totally manual SLR camera without so much as a light meter. These limitations however did not hinder me as they made me push my photography techniques no longer been able to shoot at random and hope I had got a shot worth keeping, I had to meticulously plan each day, each hour and each shot to get precisely what I wanted from Venice. I adopted techniques from the greats to help me for instance in a few cases I found what I thought would make a good picture, set up and waited for what Cartier-Bresson called the ‘Decisive moment’ This I believe pushed my photography and led to me creating some of my best work.
The decision to use film was for this exact purpose as I new that I would only produce quantity rather than quality if I shot purely on digital. There is however a mix of digital and analogue as this allowed me to make sure I had some work if something went wrong with the film.
With this decision also came about how my images would be presented I chose to use a less saturated colour film (Kodak Ektar) and in some cases black and white. I made this decision as the slightly more washed out colours give the images a very quiet and sedate feeling adding to the juxtaposition of empty and calm streets.
