Lead Review

• Book: Venice Deserted
• Location: Venice
• Author: Danielle Carton, Luc Carton

Review Author: Tina Hartas

This compilation of photos was taken in Venice in the early days of lockdown in 2020. Spring is certainly in the air and the blossom is out, the skies are blue and there isn’t a single tourist to be seen in any photo. It is the Venice we know and love and yet it is quite unsettling – discombobulating even – to see such an array of phots and not a single tourist or grande nave or open souvenir shop – all the perhaps more negative things we have come to associate with the Lagoon City.

The couple chose several areas on which to focus – San Marco, Canale Grande, Dorsodureo, San Polo/Santa Croce, Cannaregio and Castello. This is Venice suspended in time, caught without human life, yet still majestic and familiar. In Fondamenta de la Dogana a la Salute and the Grand Canal, they capture serried ranks of gondolas, you can sense them gently bobbing, there are no motor launches or ferries to stir up the waters. The Rio de San Giovanni Laterano depicts the canal waters as still as glass, the chairs are stacked high in front of Caffè Florian on the Procuratie Nuove in San Marco. Will a café which has been in existence since 1720 manage to survive the onslaught of Covid 19?

There is no significant text to go with the photos, they speak for themselves and by the end of the volume I had so many questions for the authors, which I pose to them below.

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