JoAnn Locktov’s latest book on Venice completes only the second genuine trilogy I have ever read. The first volume was a wonderful introduction to Venice, one that was well named because, I swear, I have dreamed of a trip to that enchanted isle ever since I read Dream of Venice. But that was one aspect of the city: the many ways people have come to love it over the centuries.

Dream of Venice Architecture was a joy and a fascination all its own because in it Locktov assembled some three dozen international architects and architectural writers who explained the many difficulties overcome by those Italians who chose to build a city of gargantuan stone buildings and site them on mud flats. So that was a second aspect of Venice: the miracle of its birth.
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And now we come to a third aspect of Venice, the element that makes it a true trilogy. Why Dream of Venice in Black and White in a world awash in color photography? It’s because Locktov is examining a third aspect of the city, and doing so in a classic trilogy format. It’s not a single narrative broken into three parts; it’s one subject examined from three entirely different viewpoints. In examining these three aspects of the city we have gone from admirers to architects to eyes, but different eyes this time, eyes that look closely, that examine, that seek to understand the intricacies, which so many of us dismiss as the commonplace. They’re photographers in search of what is sadly becoming a rarity—the people who actually live in Venice.

The first two books had numerous short pieces from a wide variety of people, but this time Locktov elected to use only an Introduction by Tiziano Scarpa, an Italian novelist, playwright, poet, and native son of Venice. She explains, “In this book my goal was to reveal what it is like for a Venetian to be living now in Venice. I knew that to explore this revelation the writer would need more than 300 words. So, I asked Tiziano for 3,000 words to help us understand his life.”

Venice is different from any city I know, both the sheer beauty of the city itself and the way in which it was built. I never really read on it without learning something fantastical, and Scarpa’s Introduction was no different. From it I learned that the squares that are such a sociable part of Venice were originally not designed for that purpose at all. A city built on wooden pilings in mud flats has no natural wells, but the ancient Venetians got around that most ingeniously. Scarpa explains that rain water was originally gathered in those squares and then transported to a sand-filled cistern for filtering and cleaning, and eventually to a central well that supplied the city with fresh water for centuries before the advent of an aqueduct.
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But, mostly, that Introduction is a personal insight into how it feels to be one of just 53,000 people who still actually live in historic Venice—and that’s by design. In discussing the Introduction with me later, Locktov said, “There are erudite articles and even books about this precarious time for Venice, but what I wanted was for Tiziano to share with us what it feels like at this critical juncture to be a resident of Venice, confronting her conflicts. In his inimitable style he writes of the new inhabitants while weaving in history and unimaginable beauty. We never lose sight of the fact that Venice is a place where both the sacred and the profane co-exist.”

Scarpa cannot help lamenting the very nearly tragic crush of tourists that now invades the city. I suppose there are kinder words to use, but seeing how the city has been transformed over the last few decades one cannot help wishing Venice had better custodians. Scarpa starts with that very issue because he is a citizen of Venice, and when he moved to his present home he tried to strike up a conversation with his new neighbors. He was a bit disconcerted to realize that they spoke only English—American tourists, there for a weekend, then to be replaced by another in a long line of tourists. Just one face in many he has come to see in that single abode. It only looks like a home; it serves as an inn now.

“I live next to tourists,” Scarpa writes. “I live alongside them. What I mean is: I don’t just meet strangers on the street; tourists are my neighbors. I live here, and I am always the same. They change. My continuity borders on their impermanence.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the very rich are different from you and me, but really, they’re not. They’re just greed writ large. The ones who are different from the rest of us are the truly creative. Photographers, the really good ones who point their cameras at the commonplace and create a masterpiece, are able to see things the rest of us can’t.

These master photographers are often black and white photographers because of what they’re striving for. They will tell you there is realism in black and white photography that simply cannot be had in color. There are artistic reasons for choosing black and white over color at times. Without the distraction of color the photographer sees light differently and finds it easier to emphasize emotion. It amplifies the use of negative space, highlights shape, form, and pattern in the image, and because those qualities have been brought to the forefront, they help focus on composition.

There is often a deeper, more profound reason for a photographer like Gianni Berengo Gardin almost always choosing black and white for his photography: veritas. That’s a ten dollar word for truth which I chose to use, not because it’s Harvard University’s logo or even because it’s a ten dollar word but because it brings us closer to the underlying concept. Truth. But not just truth. Absolute truth, that which is there whether we are aware of it or not. “I chopped down the cherry tree is a truth,” but veritas is a deeper truth, the type of thing that philosophers seek out in their many books, and some people go in search of with a camera. 

Locktov has rightly dedicated this book to Gianni Berengo Gardin, not because he is a famous Italian photographer, but because he is a marvelous photographer she has long admired. As she put it, “I’ve known about Gianni Berengo Gardin’s work for a long time because his images of Venice are compelling and quite famous. So he’s been on the periphery of my consciousness for a while. It wasn’t until his exhibit of the big ships (Venezia e le Grandi Navi) in 2015 that I started to study his life work as a photographer. The big ships exhibit was not the first time that Berengo Gardin has exposed a nefarious situation; his work documents the ugly and the beautiful.”

Berengo Gardin has focused most of his attention on photographs of people because, as he put it, he does it “to tell their story, but underneath it all was a basic need to defend their dignity. That’s what really interests me.”

Those who admire his photography often describe his photographs as beautiful, but that has never been his goal. When he was very young he spent some time with an older, renowned photographer, Ugo Mulas, who taught him, “Beautiful photos might be aesthetically perfect and well-constructed, but they don’t say anything. A good photo tells you things, stories… it communicates something. Beautiful photos communicate too, but what they communicate is useless.”

Locktov naturally looked for this very quality when she gathered the photographs used in this volume, but then she went them one better. She took away the safety net. There are no captions on these pictures, no profound thoughts, nothing to tell us what to look for in these photographs, no added verbiage of any kind. As she put it, “I decided to isolate the photography without text, so it existed solely on the strength of the image. Part of the beauty of black and white is that it documents life without the distraction of color. I felt any additional text (more than identifying the photographer and a title) would minimize, rather than add to the narrative inherent in the images.”

What we are privileged to see in these sublime photographs is a Venice altogether different, not only from that depicted in the first two volumes of this series, but one that is sadly different from what one sees if one visits Venice. Which is both good and bad, I suppose. Good in the sense that it exists, bad—or more precisely, sad—that what we see in these photographs is so different from what we see in the summer months with the cruise ships and the noise and the tourists. Here is the other Venice, the real Venice if you will. 

Like the two books that preceded it, every detail in Dream of Venice in Black and White has been carefully considered. In that respect, it’s like one of those Japanese wood puzzles made of a myriad of wooden pieces, all precisely joined into a whole.

The photography more than lives up to Locktov’s vision for the book, but you will note that I have not described any of the photographs, and I will not do so now. This is not a book to be casually leafed through. It’s a collection of brilliant photographs that will reward those who take the time to study them, the kind that makes one itch to frame a print for one’s home.

Any professional photographer pays attention to composition, but those who eschew color photography for black and white have a tendency to pay particular attention to the many separate parts that become the whole. And that, in turn is why Locktov followed up her bold choice of black and white photography with another: no captions or descriptions. It will surely seem odd for one who clearly pays so much attention to words to say this, but she’s right. There are times when you don’t tell people the truth. You let them find it.

I am fortunate enough to be a man with one love and two passions: my wife Christine, writing, and woodworking. The woodworking has always been driven by old concepts: integrity, quality, and time-honored joinery and woodworking techniques, some of which have been used for thousands of years. The writing came first and will come last, the alpha and omega of my life. I once came across a novelist who stated that writing was a tactile experience to her. If she could, she said, she would carve her novels out of wood. I feel blessed to have worked in both mediums.

You know about the museums and galleries.  You've been surfing off the lido.  And, the secret gardens of Venice are no longer a secret from you.  But, did you know about the rice paddies of Verona?  That pink flamingos migrate through the northern lagoon?  That living souls were bought and sold in exchange for Murano glass?  

Many people who read this blog are seasoned visitors to Venice.  You know a lot about her history, her treasures and her environment.  And, above all you know that no matter how much we learn there's always more to know.  On this short list, there may be something you did not yet know about Venice...

More than 20,000 birds visit Venice, and the almost 70,000 hectars of nature preserves in the Venetian lagoon, every year. These preserves include the barene – the muds flats within the lagoon – as well as the sand dunes at Alberoni and San Nicolo on the Lido, Ca'Roman on Pellestrina, and a swath of coastline near Chioggia.  

For the past two years, a flock of flamingos – Yes, pink ones! - has migrated through the northern lagoon each spring. There are sandpipers on the barene whose curved beaks are longer than the birds are tall. There are infinite varieties of ducks. On Sant'Erasmo, in addition to the expected farm birds, I have spotted wild ring-necked red pheasants, and colorful wild parakeets, while on the southern end of the Lido lives a flock of gregarious peacocks who don't seam to feel any need to limit themselves to staying on the farm.  

Of course birds such as sea gulls and pigeons can be hard to ignore in the center of Venice, especially when they engage in shenanigans like stealing sandwiches right out of people's hands. But, on the brighter side, it is not at all unusual to catch sight of a yellow-footed egret posing gracefully on the corner of an embarcadero. And, low-flying cormorants make a silly spectacle when they stand around airing their feathers atop the pilings in the lagoon. One day last summer a bird even flew into my living room, had a peck at the potted plants and, gratefully, flitted just as easily back out again.

"Trade beads" are probably the most globally seen Murano glass beads. Yet, very few people realize that they're Venetian. Even fewer truly grasp the historical and cultural significance of these particular beads. These days, they seem to be associated with virtually every culture except European cultures. Nevertheless, they originally came from Murano where, for hundreds of years, they were produced by the ton and shipped off on long voyages throughout the world.

​From the 16th to the 20th centuries Murano glass beads were traded as currency between the merchants of the Venetian republic and, particularly, the people's of West Africa who placed a much higher value on decorative objects than they did on European currency. So highly valued were these beads that they were used to pay for the purchase of human beings, earning them the ominous name "slave beads". 

While there certainly can not be a larger human impact of beads beyond their use as currency in the purchase of slaves, there were other significant impacts of the popularity of Murano glass beads that bear mentioning. For example, when the merchant sailors sailed off to parts unknown with their ships laden down with beads, their hard currency remained in Venice contributing significantly to the wealth of the Republic. Meanwhile, the impiraresse of Venice – the women workers whose job it was to string the billions of tiny seed beads produced on Murano for the luxury market – are known to have formed a labor union and gone on strike for better pay in the late 1800's, long before the labor movement began in Europe.

Rice has been cultivated in the Veneto, Lombardy and Piedmont since the mid-1400's. Today, Italy is the largest rice cultivator in Europe. The vast majority of rice cultivated in the humid valleys of northern Italy is short grain rice – including the famous Arborio and the Vialone Nano IGP rice cultivated near Verona.  

Long considered a precious commodity, dishes made with rice, risottos, have a special place in both Venetian history and the Venetian diet. The beloved risi e bisi, a risotto of rice and peas, was historically served to the Doge in celebration of the feast day of San Marco, the patron saint of Venice. Risotto with eel is a traditional part of a Venetian Christmas Eve dinner. And, risotto di go is a gourmet specialty risotto, local to the Venetian island of Burano, made with “giozzo” - tiny fish caught in the lagoon - and the Veneto's Vialone Nano rice. Naturally, risottos change with the season as local chefs pair the rice with seasonal vegetables and freshly caught fish.  This week, it seems we're all having asparagus risotto!

Well prepared pasta is delicious of course, but you won't have tasted Venice before you've tasted a carefully prepared risotto.

Whenever I see that a door to one of the document archives of Venice has been left open, I can't resist peeking my head in. The Republic of Venice was the home to the first trade union in Europe. It was the birthplace of modern accounting. And, of particular interest to me, and perhaps to all of us who can never seem to find the right charger for our mobile phones, somewhere inside those archives lies the first ever patent statute along with the records of the 2,000 patents that were issued by the Republic of Venice in the first 14 years that the statute went into effect. Those were the years from 1474 until 1488. Could the Venetian Senate have imagined, when they enacted that law hundreds of years ago that it would come to be adopted almost globally - Almost verbatim too! - and impact the daily lives of billions of people?

At it's peak, the Republic of Venice encompassed not only the Veneto coast and a large swath of the mainland, but also nearly the entire eastern Adriatic shore – the Dalmatian coast where one now finds the countries of Croatia, Montenegro & Albania – plus Corfu, Crete and, infamously, Constantinople. During it's peek as a trading empire, many more coastal territories, from Northern Africa to Asia, fell under the effective control of the Republic.   

Though, these days the territory of Venice and the Veneto are more limited to the lagoon and a portion of mainland Italy, there is still plenty of Venetian territory to explore beyond the city center. The lagoon itself covers an area of 550 kilometers, while the Veneto mainland stretches from Cortina to the north, Verona to the west and Chioggia and the Po Delta to the South. As you can imagine, recreational, educational and culinary experience opportunities abound in this territory.

Why, one could even go hiking in the morning, have a risotto for lunch, do a little shopping for Murano glass beads and pop into a document archive in the afternoon before gliding off on a sunset bird-watching cruise of the lagoon. Now that sounds like an amazing day in Venice!

What image comes to mind when you picture a “dying city”? If it's not a group of scantily- clad people eating pizza in the street, nor a noisy bunch of joyful travelers disembarking from a boat, nor a rowdy group of teenagers trotting through the town with open beers sloshing in their hands, then you must not be picturing Venice. I'm sure no one thinks of “degradation” while admiring the paintings of Titian and Tintoretto. And, I agree that dangerously decaying stucco does, in fact, look beautiful here. So why would any visitor to Venice think of this as a degraded and dying city? How would they know? ​

Here in Venice, death looks like candy, multi-colored pasta, and dried lavender. It looks like both designer and discount clothing, with absolutely nothing in between. It looks like a brand new five star hotel, plus five or six new bed and breakfasts. It looks like take-away pasta and, also cocktails to take-away. It looks like souvenir, schotsky and t-shirt shops whose windows strangely do not change with the seasons. It looks like signs announcing “limited time” sales that mysteriously never end. It looks like the fish mongers must actually be models for all the cameras pointing at them. And, it looks like we shall have to go to mainland to get XYZ.  

All of which is to say that the death of Venice looks like an on-going Carnevale which sucks up and discards everything relevant to a living community and replaces it with trinkets that are really only appealing to people on holiday as it rolls on its deep-fried and sugar-coated way to the next “historical” festival to which locals are only invited as performers.

Death is adorned with identical window boxes, or spindly succulents, or shutters with the paint peeling off, and it never needs to hang its laundry out to dry. There are lots of ways to identify a house where no one really lives.

​Death wears no uniform and answers no telephone. As the number of residents in Venice dwindles, so do public services. And while there may be some vacationing fools out there who gleefully jump off of bridges knowing that no one is coming to stop them, they would do well to remember that, should they fall off of bridges instead, no would come to save them either.  

There is something enchantingly beautiful about the crumbling stucco walls and wave-worn stones that adorn Venice. But, make no mistake, Venice is experiencing both physical and moral degradation. Both the supports and foundations of Venice are degrading. Meanwhile, Venetians are responsible for the disposal of the massive amounts of unsightly and unsanitary waste produced by visitors to the city. This is a very visible degradation, particularly as this waste so often finds it's way to the steps of monuments and into the doorways and windowsills of private homes; A stinking insult to the dignity of both Venetian history and living Venetians.

But, don't think that degradation always looks like filth and rot. It also looks like glittery plastic carnival masks, faux Murano glass, and, now also “gastronomic souvenirs” which are actually mass-produced imitations of Italian specialty foods. It is terribly emotionally, culturally and financially degrading to helplessly observe the spread of this mockery of traditional Venetian products right here where the original products were created.  

Degradation is also a picnic, a picnic to which Venetians are not invited. While thousands of tourists settle themselves in the streets, on the bridges, along the canals, on vaporetto docks, and in the squares for lunch “al fresco” every day, a Venetian family was recently fined for “illegal occupation of public space” for making so bold as to throw a child's birthday party outdoors in a public square. Is it not degrading to be told that there is just no room for you and your children in the public spaces which your taxes pay to keep clean?  

Degradation is the enactment of a special law without any consultation of the community. It is also the unquestioned, un-researched and utterly false reporting of local events. And, of course, it is very degrading indeed to be told by those entrusted with the care of the city that those who don't like it should just leave.

Degradation is a hiss, a long sigh and a shove, intended for the millions who don't speak your language nor care about your manners, but very often also landing on one of your few remaining neighbors as a slight that will prevent you from forming a polite relationship with them either.

I was at home overseas the first time that reality of what my Venetian friends had been telling me for years suddenly became clear to me. I was equal parts outraged and deeply saddened, empathetic and guilty. For, even then, I was a foreigner who regularly took up space here. Now, I am a foreigner who lives here, who was married here, who does her shopping here and greets her neighbors here. And, in my darkest hours I imagine that we are among the last families who will ever really live here, though I really couldn't say for how long we'll keep at it.

It was one thing, to analyze the Venetian reality from the distance. The lack of housing and lack of skilled jobs are easy enough statistics to verify online. It is something else to live the day-to-day death and degradation of this city that I continue to love and admire so much even as I too slowly become one of those who issues the long-sigh.