Salute (1)

[John Matturri]

http://circles-of-confusion.com/page/page-2009/2009-11-21-salute1

The prequel to the Salute street fair set. The church was built (on a foundation of over a million logs driven into the mud) as an ex-voto for the end of an early seventeenth century plague and every year a bridge is built across the Grand Canal (alas, these days on pontons not over boats) which people walk over to get to the church, where masses take place hourly and confessions all day. The main ritual is having candles lit. Somehow I was very surprised by the number of Venetians that continue to light the candles and also how emotions involved. As I suggested in a post to the first set I suspect that there may be other factors involved.

I tried to have a bit of narrative flow for the set, although, truth be told, people walking into the church, hanging around a bit, and lighting candles really doesn't give much of a basis for a narrative. As part of that I threw in a bit of a hookey introduction of of people entering and an introductory shot from the bridge, taken the next day when the weather was much worse.

Couldn't figure out how to make the two sets cohere.

j

[eenixon]

I particularly like the group portraits, e.g.,

http://circles-of-confusion.com/page/pa ... large.html

with the wonderful light.

This one

http://circles-of-confusion.com/page/pa ... large.html

has that 'gap' quality you were mentioning, in spades -- like the ghost of a Fellini character, just passing by, coming in on an impulse.

And the juxtaposition of old and new here

http://circles-of-confusion.com/page/pa ... large.html

is to the point (is a bit broad in its positioning in the set.) What did they ever do without TV in the Seventeenth century?

I would have been a bit concerned about the differences in colour balance over the set. However, I can imagine it would have been a nightmare to control -- whatever interior artificial light there was is probably some weird fluorescent or other gas vapor stuff, loads of candles and a bit of overcast sky as well.

[John Matturri]

Thanks, Ed.

http://circles-of-confusion.com/page/pa%20...%20large.html

has that 'gap' quality you were mentioning, in spades -- like the ghost of a Fellini character, just passing by, coming in on an impulse.

Actually she seems to me to be a rather classic Venetian who I would have more expected to take part. But, yes, she reminds me of the mother who is seen going to a private chapel service as the aristocrats are getting home from their revels in the abandoned palace in La Dolce Vita. This set -- both sets really -- is very uncharacteristic of what I did there but may fit into the notion of disrupting the standard perception of the city. Of course the first picture buys into that perception (though its perspective would look a bit odd for someone who assumes that it was taken from the Academia bridge a bit further up the canal), but one of the oddities is that the calender and postcard photogs do get one aspect of Venice right and to ignore that aspect would be as artificial as ignoring the things that go against the established grain.

http://circles-of-confusion.com/page/pa ... large.html
is to the point (is a bit broad in its positioning in the set.) What did they ever do without TV in the Seventeenth century?

Can't say that any of this is conceptually worked out. As I tend to do when trying to create a more or less organized set, I shuffled the picts back and forth, keeping looking at various arrangements as rapid slideshows to get a sense of the movement. The two images seemed to link well with the double confessional and harken back -- though I doubt if anyone would see this but me -- to the two prayer books in an earlier picture. The odd perspective effect here connects this picture to a different set of pictures. When I was working on it I realized that it could be a tribute to the odd perspectives used in the church portraits of the 17th century painter Saenredam, one of my favorite artists. And I've only been partial to pictures of light emanating from the Holy Ghost in Assumption paintings, which seem to be both highly sexual and, in an extramissive fashion, proto-photographic; at times in the past linked with pictures of vapor trails, as I am sure will happen again. But I can kick myself for not getting a picture of the raising of the host on television.

As for the color balance I need to work on that more. In the old slide days I just would shoot everything with daylight film and let the light do what it would with the emulsion, coming to like the red cast quite a bit.

(Was very skeptical about this whole venture, and of the city, when I started, though not apt to turn down a free apartment for three months, but after six months there have found the many tensions and ambiguities there interesting enough that I'd like to get back somehow, especially as my Italian begins to improve. Have talked with someone about doing pictures for a book on places associated with Casanova in Venice but not sure how that could be funded. I guess it is often good to go against your own grain.)