Venice Photographer

Bringing the city back home with you through
the benefits of booking a local photographer

VENICE COUPLE PHOTOGRAPHER | VENICE FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHER | VENICE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER | VENICE ELOPEMENT PHOTOGRAPHER | PROPOSAL PHOTOSHOOTS IN VENICE | BABYMOON PHOTOSHOOT IN VENICE | RE-ENACTMENT PHOTOSHOOT IN VENICE | VENICE CARNIVAL PHOTOGRAPHER

Bringing the city
back home with you
through
the benefits of booking a
local photographer

VENICE COUPLE PHOTOGRAPHER | VENICE FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHER | VENICE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER | VENICE ELOPEMENT PHOTOGRAPHER | PROPOSAL PHOTOSHOOTS IN VENICE | BABYMOON PHOTOSHOOT IN VENICE | RE-ENACTMENT PHOTOSHOOT IN VENICE | VENICE CARNIVAL PHOTOGRAPHER

DESPONSAMUS TE, MARE

‘Desponsamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii’ – ‘We wed thee, O sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion’: the formula of the Marriage of the Sea, Festa della Sensa.

Venice is the only city in the world that celebrates its own wedding. From the year 1000, on the day of the Sensa, the doge would sail out into the lagoon aboard the Bucintoro and let a golden ring fall into the Adriatic while pronouncing those words: the Serenissima was marrying the sea. And she marries it still: the rite is renewed every spring.

My love for Venice was born with music. In the years when I was a musician, specialising in early Venetian music, I would come to the city to search its libraries for unpublished musical manuscripts: before photographing her, I read Venice in full score. Then the city did with me what she has done with the sea for ten centuries: she bound me to herself. Here I found my wife, a Venetian – and so I am local twice over, by trade and by family. I know Venice to perfection, and in the evening I do not return to a hotel: I sleep at home. For you, this means having on the lagoon the same local eye I offer on the lake.

The sketchbook William Turner brought home from his Grand Tour is called ‘Como and Venice’: my geography was already written on that cover. The cinema has countersigned it with two titles: ‘Summertime’ (1955) by David Lean, with Katharine Hepburn – the film that gave the world the modern idea of travelling to Venice – and ‘Casino Royale’ (2006), which begins on Lake Como and ends in Venice.

Doges, musicians and film directors: all have sworn fidelity to her. This time, at the centre of the stage, there will be your story.

THE LABYRINTH AND THE VENETIAN SIDESTEP

Let us be frank: without the necessary knowledge, Venice reveals itself as an overcrowded labyrinth where good frames seem impossible to find. I have built my work precisely to solve this problem: only a local photographer can plan timing, light and itineraries here.

My method has a name: the Venetian sidestep. You are in a crowded calle, where even walking is a struggle; one step aside – a single corner, the right one – and you find yourself in a photogenic, iconographic place, as representative of Venice as the celebrated ones, where nobody passes. It is not luck: it is knowledge of the flows, the hours and the passageways – the kind that comes from living here. The benefit is the same one I guarantee on the lake: wide compositions, without a single stranger in the frame.

In my itineraries, the celebrated places and the hidden corners stand together, deliberately: Venice tells her story through both. I have more than one itinerary for every sestiere, and I can start them from any point in the city, with a route built for your situation. I also keep a few secret places that seem to stand outside of time, as though reached through an imaginary Faerie Tale Gate. And when the story calls for water, I know whom to ask: collaborative gondoliers, gladly willing to interact with my work.

This sensibility for routes I refined alongside a few high-level tourist guides, themselves keen photographers; from their advice I grew independent and developed a personal method. Of its solidity, one episode says more than any explanation. I was photographing in the area of the La Fenice theatre when the couple I was working with observed: ‘Luca, we are using the same scenes as “Death in Venice”’ – Luchino Visconti’s film, 1971. I have never seen it, then as now: a story too sad and too bleak for my sensibility. And yet my route included the very frames the director had chosen. When two gazes seek the essence of Venice, they meet – and one of the two will be working for you.

MY MUSE IS CALLED VENICE

Outside my private commissions, almost all of my artistic activity is born here: Venice is my muse. She was the theme of the work that earned me the gold medal of the International Action Art – UNESCO: ‘The Faerie Tale of Venice and the Incense Trade Route’, which today belongs to the permanent collections of two museums in Oman. My fairy tales are devoted to her; and to narrate her in fantasy as well, I returned to my studies, mastering the most complex photomanipulations and synthography. My projects also involve the masks of the Carnival – and on this theme I can develop a dedicated project, conceived for you.

Together we will travel through time: it is the natural dimension of my storytelling. In my projects, it has already happened that the past, the present and the future met in a single story – you will find it in the article ‘The Tale in Which the Past, the Present and the Future Have All Become One’.

FAMILY STORYTELLING

Families, too, I photograph as a storyteller. My style is not static: the inspiration comes as much from painting as from photojournalism, and every family photoshoot in Venice becomes a sequence capable of telling a story. It is a way of seeing born of the most direct experience: I am a husband, and the father of two.

‘JUST BE YOURSELF’

You know, every moment with your beloved ones is important I specifically work to capture the best of these times in every family photoshoot taken in Venice.

Is the concept of narrative photography new to you? Not a problem. You be yourself: everything else is my task, and I will lead you through it step by step. I have a method for it – quick and enjoyable to learn – that turns you into an actor who knows how to pose, with me as the director of your ‘film’.

I take care of style before the first frame is ever taken: Armochromy is part of my method, and how to dress for the city – whose soul has three colours: white, green and brown – is the subject of the article ‘Venice is white, green and brown’. And we shall verify everything together.

My photography style is not static, I find great inspiration in paintings as well as in photojournalism.
I will give it all a special touch, to make photos that can tell stories and this comes from my own experience as husband and father of two.

WHAT ABOUT THE INVESTMENT?

The guide to the investment is published within the article ‘Venice is white, green and brown’. The figures indicated are those for opening and completing the project with me – they bear little relation to any count of hours. To your advantage, we are speaking of art and of photographic language: I am not proposing a ‘product’ sold by weight. Of this language I have also spoken from the lectern: at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, I held master lectures for aspiring wedding planners, on the styles of photography and on how to work with us photographers – the needs of our profession.