Dec 23

Dec 23 No Expectations

“So take me to the airport
And put me on a plane
I’ve got no expectations
To pass through here again”

— No Expectations, Rolling Stones, from Beggar's Banquet (December 1968)

I last slept in Venice 18 years ago. At the time, I had no intention of returning. Even back then, Venice suffered from tourism’s scourges. By 1970, the city had reached its peak population, with just over 180,000 residents. The number of residents then dropped precipitously, falling to just over 50,000 residents in recent years, with two citizens moving out each day. The Aqua Alta is one reason for the decline, but I suspect over-tourism is the primary driver behind the exodus. Imagine trying to dine al fresco with friends at a neighborhood trattoria in July. Better to live elsewhere, financing your move by converting your home into an Airbnb.

In 2017, 38 million international tourists visited Venice, which represents a 10% increase over the prior year. The Venice Port Authority estimates that some 32,000 cruise ship passengers disembark daily from April to October. To put those numbers in historical perspective: Just over one million tourists visited Venice in 1959. By 1977, that number had doubled, and by 1994, it had doubled again, reaching four million annual visitors.

The reasons for the explosive growth in tourism during the last two decades are obvious: cheap air travel, easy hotel and Airbnb Internet bookings, growth in cruise ship popularity, and Asian economic prosperity. When I booked my hotel room back in 2001, I had to do it by fax.

Despite my legitimate reservations, I decided to return to Venice this December because I thought winter Venice would produce some interesting images—fog, floods, and rain. Any snow would be a bonus. Those who do not photograph or who limit their photographic activities to selfies may find my thinking surprising, believing that bright blue summer skies make for the perfect image. If you have spent any time perusing the rich heritage left by the photographic masters, you share my disdain for blue skies. Postcard blue is boring, unless infrared filters are used, liberties are taken during post processing, or you are Martin Parr or Massimo Vitali. Extreme weather is where the memorable photographs reside. Imperfection produces the perfect image.

Like my first trip to Venice, I was disoriented after I disembarked from the train. On my last visit, I had stayed somewhere in the Santa Croce district. This time, I was on the San Marco side of the Grand Canal, so up was down, and left was right. But I had three cameras with me, so I righted myself quickly, or at least I was distracted enough not to be concerned about being lost. On my first trip, I was told to bring a compass; Google maps did not exist. On this trip, I never used that app. I just turned this way and that as I followed the maze of stone walls at right angles to each other, trying to keep the main canal in sight. I did surprisingly well.

The first thing I noticed while riding the Number 1 vaporetto from the Venezia Santa Lucia Railroad Station to my hotel, which was conveniently located at the San Angelo stop, was the water gently lapping up against the palazzos lining the route. And of course, I noticed the gondolas, with the oarsmen wearing their signature horizontal striped shirts, but with a winter twist: the shirts were partially hidden under sleeveless black, puffy parka vests. Oh, and I also noticed that many of the passengers who were paying somewhere around 70 Euros for a 30-minute gondola ride were glued to their screens. Go figure.

For the most part, Venice looked the same as it did almost two decades ago. It was only after walking around for a few days that I realized what had changed, or at least differed from my memories. Back when I made those memories, the storefronts were rickety facades, with fogged windows that let little light pass into the interior spaces. Inside were craft shops, where artisans made the items that they sold. I did discover a few of those during this visit, including a paper-maker who was third generation, a jeweler who had been in business 35 years, and a shop that made ornamentation for gondolas. I even stumbled across the mask shop I had wandered into long ago, with the same sign in the window claiming that the artisan inside had made all the masks used in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. I wonder whether Tom and Nicole stopped in before their split.

What had changed, and dramatically so, was the area from the Rialto Bridge to St. Mark’s Square. Instead of the old shops that fondly came to mind, I encountered building facades that had been transformed. Only a war serves as an excuse for this sort of of reconstruction. Each building’s ground floor had been gutted, with modern glass and steel facades replacing the seasoned wood and cracked plaster. Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, and Bvlgari, among many others, had staked out territory. I might as well have been on Oak Street in Chicago, Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, or Madison Avenue in New York City.

And for the hoi polloi, there was Disney, Levi’s, Type II diabetes stores selling licorice whips, chews, and other sugary confections, as well as gelato shops (including Grom), and restaurants with plastic cards in the window illustrating what was on offer. I assume Japanese tourists inspired the window graphics: In Tokyo there is an entire block of shops selling plastic sushi replicas that are used by restaurant owners as part of window displays to advertise the eats within.

There even is a luxury shopping mall (DFS Luxury Shopping Center) adjacent to the Rialto Bridge that has name-brand boutiques and appealing eateries. I must confess, it is a beautiful four-story space with an atrium in the center and a pretty classy Santa Claus and elf on the ground floor. No doubt it appeals to Asian tour operators, whose clientele seem to be particularly attracted to expensive designer-brand logos. Although a stereotype and a somewhat unfair one given that plenty of other travelers are walking around with bags filled with merch, I base that statement on years of observation and bag counts.

Despite being a shopping mall, DFS is worth a visit because it has an observation deck overlooking a strategic point on the Grand Canal, although the building’s roof lines and ornamentation made a panorama impossible (at least for me). You enter the observation deck through a black space filled with Bvlgari display cases. I can only wonder how much Bvlgari paid for that choice space. All those people waiting in line with nothing else to do until their fifteen minutes of allotted time on the roof comes up.

Who goes, or more appropriately why go on vacation to shop at international luxury good establishments, particularly because those retailers all have outlets throughout the world? I certainly am not expecting to find bargains in tourist central, nor should you.

I am not opposed to shopping on vacation, particularly because my lovely spouse tells me anything that is bought on vacation is free if it is local and unavailable in the U.S. Our home is filled with fabrics and serving dishes that we have purchased from artisans throughout the world. Another confession: a few years back, while in Paris, Evelyn discovered Gallo socks, an Italian brand sold in the boutique Mes Chaussettes Rouges, which is located in the 5th Arrondissement. Well, when in the source country, I couldn’t resist replenishing my sock drawer with the colorful creations that earned me a compliment from the nurse during my recent colonoscopy—”the most colorful socks of the day.”

Despite the perceived changes, I enjoyed my six-night stay much more than I did my earlier one, probably because there was less pressure to see the bucket list Top Ten items—St. Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, the Accademia, the Rialto Bridge and Market, Burano, and the Grand Canal. I found myself just taking in the street life and architecture, the ambiance, the hidden nooks, and the curves as I walked, often far from the main tourist attractions. But as many of my images demonstrate, the Top Ten are ever present.

Each morning I headed out at 6 AM. One morning the fog was so thick that I was unable to capture any images of Salute, but that just meant that I walked until I got lost—if you don’t get lost in a foreign city, you are not approaching the journey properly. As I desperately tried to find my way back to known territory, I encountered a high school where the kids were gathered outside flirting and smoking. The flirting wasn’t troubling, but in this day and age, seeing half those kids with cigarettes was disturbing, although I have to agree with them: The thin European cigarettes up the smoker’s cachet. Cool.

During my week in Venice, I had some interesting conversations with locals, ate terrific seafood every night (turbot, sea bream, sea bass, tuna, octopus, clams, cuttle fish, shrimp, scallops), and I enjoyed the changing light. I also attended an opera (Pinocchio) at the Teatro Malibran, which was enjoyable, particularly because the acoustics were noteworthy, at least from my box.

At the end of the day, Venice poses at least two conundrums for photographers. First, to the extent travel photography is a subset of street photographer, are photographers doing street photography, or is the better phrase “canal photography?” Second, and far more significant, is the limits posed by cliche. Even serious photographers take photographs of the canals, St. Mark’s Square and Basilica, gondolas, and other postcard scenes. Given digital, there is no cost to doing so (except the time spent culling through the captured images). Yet, there really isn’t any point in adding to the billions of images that already exist—yes, billions. I did a calculation a few years back on the number of images taken of the Eiffel Tower during the prior decade. Conservatively, I put it at three to four billion.

But cliche can serve a greater good. In Venice, it offers an excuse to capture light and shadow, the paper manifestations of which will be tossed when I am discarded like every other living soul before me. Like light and shadow, those images may be transitory, but they are worth making in the moment.

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