Dancing Souls at Canal Grande

For centuries, day by day, as darkness falls, the same ceremony takes place at Canal Grande. The souls of the founders of Venice meet and start dancing and celebrating the beauty of what they have created with their hands and minds. Out of the muddy waters they built a dream-like city, stone by stone, on millions of wooden piles, which they hit into the swamps.

The dance lasts only a few minutes and one must hurry to catch the delicate moments, when Venice shows his magical essence: Water, light and stones. All of a sudden, here and there, the souls show up as flickering lights, flashing and disappearing.

 

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Death of Venice

 

These pictures show an apocalyptic vision. Venice is falling apart, set on fire and flooded. Even the people seem to stem from another place and another age. In the end monstrous pigeons and bizarre human creatures are ruling. In art there is a famous tradition of such visions, best known by the scenarios of the Renaissance artists Hieronymus Bosch or Peter Bruegel the Elder.

I took these pictures after heavy rainfall or acqua alta – they are reflections of the cityscape in puddles: Windows to another world. The eerie colors and shapes are caused by debris, mud, leaves, undercoating, dirt and wind. To show them in the gallery, I turn them upside down. With this tiny trick you see them not as reflections, but as bizarre realities. Fourteen of them will be on show at “Soho Photo Gallery” in New York in December 2017.

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