Venice off season or not at all. He was specific about this.

He said Venice but with conditions. The condition was November. He said if I went to Venice in any other month I was going to a theme park, not a city, and he would not be held responsible for the photographs.

I asked if this was strictly necessary.

He said yes and sent me a table of tourist arrival statistics by month which I did not ask for but which was, he noted, conclusive.

November Venice

Empty in a way that feels borrowed. Like the city is between its real self and its performing self and you caught it in the interval. The canals without the vaporetto queues. The Rialto market with the actual residents buying fish. San Marco with nobody in it at 6am.

The city exists properly for about four months a year. You chose correctly. Try to act like this was your idea.

It was not my idea. The November condition was entirely his. I am writing this down.

The photography problem with Venice

The problem with Venice is that every shot has been taken. Every angle, every canal, every gondola. Dante’s approach to this: stop shooting angles and start shooting the specific Venice that exists in November that doesn’t exist in June.

The vegetable barges at 7am. The cats in Dorsoduro. The fog on the Lagoon. The delivery men moving boxes through alleys while tourists sleep. The city before it becomes a set.

This is better advice than any photography book I have read.

Acqua Alta

It rained hard on day three. The lower parts of the city flooded, the way they do. The walkways went up. People in rubber boots walked across San Marco.

He said: shoot it. Everyone is going to wait inside and miss it. You’re not everyone.

The photographs from the flooding are the best from the trip.

Both gave it an eight

We agreed on this one. Which he found suspicious and I found reasonable. He said the agreement was probably because we were both right. I did not argue because we were both right.