Morning in Venice

Venice.

This time in Venice, I stopped in a quiet area of Canareggio, at an old hotel located far from the tourist routes. Every morning I was woken up by the bell of the old church, and, opening the shutters, I watched this mysterious and forever stuck in its distant and brilliant past city wake up. Another night was dying, and at the last hour the streets were plunged into a thick fog. Venice, which so often appears to us in colorful postcards similar to each other, turned out to be without its ceremonial clothes, slightly covering its nakedness with a milky, translucent garment... There was a special silence that morning. The fog, born on a wet, cold night, glided noiselessly along the ancient streets and embankments, absorbing architecture and other passers-by... Time seemed to have stopped and, obeying some mystical laws, did not want to move forward...

Then I saw him on the Tre Archi Bridge...He stood silently and smoked a cigarette. Nothing took his attention away, and even I, with my camera, could not distract him from contemplating the majestic picture of the city immersed in fog, in which he was as much a living person as the old humpback bridge, the burning lanterns and boat poles, near which the water was still sobbing softly...

Venice. March, 2004.