Chris Bickford

Художник

In Venice, the iconography of “the mask” has moved so far past the point of cliché that even to speak of masks in Venice as cliché, is a cliché in itself.  La maschera has become the ulitmate symbol of crass commercialism in a city that centuries ago built an empire on trade, and eventually declined into the great pleasure-den of Europe.   Walk down any market street in Venice and you will pass shop after shop selling infinite variations of masks; some specializing in high-end, handcrafted masks-as-art selling for hundreds of dollars, some displaying thousands of cheap plastic masks ordered direct from Ali Baba Suppliers in Hong Kong and available for a couple of euros.   And any strada, campo, or piazza wide enough to accommodate a kiosk will be littered with street vendors hawking more of the same.   I have little doubt that some Venetians have nightmares of their city drowning–not from the acqua alta, and not from the weight of millions of tourists, but from a sea of masks, growing ever higher, rising above every high-water line, filling her squares and alleyways with imitation non-biodegradable representations of their city’s storied history.

It may come as a surprise to the casual visitor that thirty-two years ago there was not a single mask shop in Venice, nor even a single craftsperson who made masks .   When Carnival was re-instated in Venice in the early 1980’s, no one even knew how the masks of old were constructed, or what they looked like.  It took untold hours  of research, experimentation, imagination, and plain hard work for these now-ubiquitous symbols of Venice to be re-invented by an enthusiastic and dedicated group of students, artists, and performers, who pored through dusty books in old libraries looking for example, instruction, and inspiration.   In a country where craftsmanship still means something, and secrets of the trades are still handed down from one generation to the next, the art of making masks had no guilds, no mentors, no traditions…It was an open field, a cowboy-country of potential creativity and innovation.  Perhaps therein lies seed of the tragicomedy that is the history of the modern Venetian mask.

Some of the friends I’ve made in Venice have told me stories of those early Carnivals.  In the first decades of the revival, Carnival buzzed with civic pride.  The young Venetians in particular felt they were reclaiming a part of their heritage, and having a big old time in the process.  The early masks and costumes were not so elaborate as those on offer by today’s high-end ateliers, nor as tacky as the nylon and polyester outfits currently on hand in the downmarket shops, but they doubtless contained a lot more soul within their fibers than either of their contemporary forms.  Most participants made their own costumes, and everybody played a part.  The streets were alive with spontaneous celebrations, and troupes of performers from around Europe had begun to come to Venice to participate.

I sometimes wonder what those early Carnivals were like–the spontaneity, the creativity, the buzz in the air, the sense that all the world is indeed a stage, that the masquerade was really making a comeback, that the primordial spirit of Carnival had returned to its rightful home: the watery, labyrinthine wonderland that is Venice.

Now all that has changed.  Five years ago the City of Venice sold Carnival to a private marketing firm based in Milan.  The early pioneers were burnt out, and getting older.   The celebration had grown so big, so fast, that things had gotten out of hand.  The European jet-set had discovered the scene, elaborate balls were staged, and Venice began to promote Carnival heavily as a tourist destination during the previously lean winter months.   A coterie of French, German, and Russian enthusiasts had begun to make Carnevale their own, and arrived every year with trunkfuls of costumes, in which they frequented Caffe Florian and the round of masquerade balls that were springing up in all the finest palazzos.   The street party got more and more raucous and less and less Carnivalesque, as backpackers and college kids flooded into the city to drink and mingle and generally treat Venice like a huge open-air nightclub.  Few of them bothered with masks or costumes.

Today there is little local participation in Carnival other than from a commercial standpoint.  From the grandest masquerade balls to the drunken crowds of Euro-partiers in Rialto and Campo Santa Margherita, Carnival today is an entirely tourist-driven phenomenon.   The locals tolerate it, endure it, work it, like the residents of any tourist destination.   But they don’t go in for it much, other than for a bit of a laugh.  Most of them keep their heads low until it passes, and they can reclaim the city for a few sweet weeks in early spring before the tourist hordes and cruise-ship day-trippers clog their streets again.

It might be going too far to say that Carnival is killing Venice.  In truth, there are many things that are killing Venice, and anyway Venice has been dying for the past five hundred years.   Indeed, it is the allure and mystery of its special brand of decay that makes Venice so beguiling.

I originally intended this post to be a more philosophical meditation on the idea of the mask.   About the abandonment of the self, the re-structuring of image, the ways in which, rather than hide one’s persona, the mask can allow for deeper, darker aspects of one’s personality to have their day in the sun.   About the parallels between the Venetian mask and the reflections in the Venetian canals, which hide the murky depths and reflect back in shimmering shapes the colors and gothic structures of the city’s façades.   The potentials for metaphor, myth, and psychological meditation
are endless.   But I’ll save the philosophy for the book, or for another post.   For now, I guess I had to get this one out of my system.

Anyone who has come to know and love Venice and see her potential as a model for the pure city—a completely pedestrian metropolis, organically built, with two networks of navigation and endless opportunities for art, culture, and society to thrive–a city full of history, mystery, legend and lore; a city devoid of suburbs, sprawl, automobile traffic, and smog; a city built on a perfectly human scale; where people routinely run into their friends and acquaintances on the street and those who know her well can always lead you to a shortcut, a secret spot, a way to avoid the crowds–anyone who has some sense of what Venice could be can’t help being frustrated that the powers that be seem to keep pushing her in the opposite direction, slowly gutting her population to make room for more tourist traffic and flogging the world’s imagination with tired caricatures of her image.  Venice will always have her hold-outs, her die-hards, those willing to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous commercialism and stand their ground in the siege-war for her soul….you will find them meeting for coffee in Campo Santa Margherita, eating cichetti on the Fondamentas of Cannaregio, listening to gypsy music in Paradaiso Perdutto, making art in drafty studios down back alleys…but as the years wear on and their numbers are thinned by limited career opportunities, high rents, and general indifference from the Italian government, the forecast for some kind of cultural renaissance in Venice seems more and more unlikely.  Unless some committed entity with real vision doesn’t turn things around, Venice will soon become an empty shell, a theme park of European nostalgia, hardly distinguishable from Busch Gardens or Disney World.

It’s a sign of the times.  In a world of information-saturation and media gluttony, we don’t have time to savor Venice, or to allow her mystery and charm to truly seduce us and lead us on a labyrinthine journey full of history and intrigue.  We only have time to breeze through, take pictures as proof that we were there, buy a few plastic made-in-China masks as souvenirs, and cross her off our list of 1000 places to go before we die.

Maybe, one day, when the world gets off the wild, heady techno-ride it’s currently infatuated with–if Venice is still standing when that day comes–we may re-discover her, not as a tawdry made-for-photos waystation on the tourist trail, but as a living, breathing, model city, a blueprint for the city of the future, couched in all the trappings of cities of the past that make them so irresistible, especially to Americans used to fast-growing made-for-automobile cities that would take days to circumnavigate.   Maybe then, Venice will be able to shed the masks and reveal her true soul, and we, finally ready to wander without agendas and allow the music of churchbells, footsteps, and water lapping on stone to seep into our unconscious, will finally be able to dream the dream of Venice, and know that the dream is real.

Anyway, we can at least dream….

The final product of my work in Venice, I decided some time ago, is going to take the form of a fantasy, a myth, a set of archetypes, rather than a documentary of the contemporary Carnival.  What has always attracted me to Carnival is not the party, not the crowds, certainly not the tourism and commercialism, but the fact that there is something about this ancient celebration that continues to this day all around the world in spite of the ways that our techno-capitalist culture has diluted and bought the rights to it for marketing purposes.  What I’m interested in is the psychological and social phenomenon that continues to call on the Dionysian/Bacchanalian spirits buried in our collective unconscious to come out and play in the darkest depths of winter, as part of some long-forgotten fertility rite.  And it is by way of this notion that I hope to show the magic and mystery even behind the mass-produced, plastic masks such as the ones in these photographs.  As much as Carnival has been cheapened, as much as those of us who claim to know better or yearn for a truer, rawer, more “authentic” Carnival spirit turn up our noses at the crassness of all these imported knockoffs, the ghosts of the old gods are still staring through them, perhaps imploring us to listen, to wonder, to join in the masquerade, to dance with Dionysus and sing with Orpheus, and to allow the mysteries of the spirit and the flesh to commingle in our souls, no matter what kind of masks we might be wearing. 

I have wasted so much money the past few years in change fees and canceled plane tickets it’s ridiculous.  Nearly every trip I take, I end up changing my plans last-minute and having to pay some kind of whopping fee just because my concept of time is a little bit vague.

Yesterday morning I woke up to an email from Delta saying “It’s time to check in”…or in other words, “your ass is outta here in 24 hours”.  Now I don’t know why, but somehow I had it in my head that I had one more day…one more day, that is, to change my flight.  I was due in Verona to meet with my printer and look at some test sheets for After the Storm, and after one aborted attempt to call the Italian Delta office, I gave up for the day and headed for the mainland to focus on more pressing matters.   Like, Duotone or Tritone?  Garda Pratt Kiara or Phoenix Motion Xantur?   Dust jacket with a French fold or cloth cover with embossed text and a photo inlay?

Getting a photo book made is a crap-load of work.  No two ways about it.   First, you have to have the pictures–which means that most likely you’ve spent the better part of the last year or two or ten or twenty slugging it away, waking up early or staying out late, standing in one place for hours or running (or in my case swimming) your ass off, negotiating access, chasing the light, juggling your art with the rest of your life, doing whatever it takes to turn a concept into a coherent set of images that gets at the thing you’ve been trying to get at.

But that’s just the beginning.  Then comes the editing, sequencing, design, retouching…each of which involves a myriad of issues and agonizing decisions.   Decisions, and more decisions.  And money, and more money.  And, by this point, other people become involved in the process, which throws in more variables, discussions, suggestions,  and differences of opinion.   I’ve been working with my designer for almost nine months now, which may surprise you when you see the final product because the design is fairly minimal.   But my mail program holds dozens of lengthy emails about border size, fonts, mood, intent…Each one hiding a very complex set of decisions being made about the final piece of work: work which at this point, is still 99.9% virtual.  Gigabytes of binary code that can be read by a computer and transformed into images on a screen, but otherwise have no real existence.  We are so close now, I can picture the book in my head almost page by page…how it will feel, what kind of sheen the pages will have…but I can’t show you.  I can’t even take a picture that will show you, because not until the first copy is printed will there be anything tangible to show, other than the images themselves.  And regardless of what your images look like on the screen or even in an exhibition, it’s nothing like seeing them in a book.   The book is the ultimate reality.  For me, at least.

So, anyway, yesterday I took the train out to Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei printers in Verona to take a look at some test prints.  We had about 3 different papers we were testing, and needed to discuss options such as cover style, whether to print duotone or tritone, what kind of cases to offer for limited edition versions, etc.   I missed my train (imagine that) and had to wait an hour for the next one, and was at EBS until sometime past 6 PM looking at the prints inside, outside, under lights, by the window, with a loupe, standing back…all the while conferring with Raffaello my rep, who was very helpful with suggestions and opinions.

In all honesty, the decisions weren’t hard to make.   I fell instantly for the most expensive paper, a beautiful warm paper that goes by the lovely name of Phoenix Motion Xantur.  The rest of the decisions you’ll have to wait and see.

Afterwards, I hopped the train back to Venice, feeling a little burnt out and still scheduled to leave Italy the next morning.  So many loose ends I would have to leave loose; friends I wouldn’t have the chance to say goodbye to, small shoots I’d hope to set up that I’d have to forget about, an invitation to the Dolomites for the weekend I’d have to turn down.  I’ll be frank, this trip has been rife with difficulties and frustrations, all of which I’ve overcome one way or another, but it’s worn me out and I’m ready to get back home and sit on the beach and curl up in my warm bed (my room here is always cold for some reason)…but I knew that once I got on that plane, it might be a while before I came back.  So, after a great dinner and some lively conversation with some friends at Edoardo’s place, I finally made it back to my apartment at around 2:30 AM, bought some Skype credits, called the Delta offices in the US, and got my ticket changed to Tuesday.  Another $250 down the drain, justified by a small assignment I picked up last minute.   Money in, money out…

Decision is a strange animal.  Sometimes it comes to you effortlessly.  You know without having to even think about it.  Other times the options weigh heavy on your brain, infinite scenarios and factors weave through your mind.  You are playing chess with the gods.  You work one situation out through all its possible conclusions, then you work out another, until you are so full of theoreticals and hypotheticals that your brain cries out for silence, relief.   But you will get none until you make a decision.  And yet, if you decide too hastily, without weighing all the factors involved, you may make a serious mistake.

“Go with your gut”, they say, but the gut can be fickle.  It may know the answer, but it also has basic needs–food, sex, love, protection, good health–that it want satisfied before it will reveal to you the answers.  And sometimes you are too sick, or lonely, or tired, or cold…but the decision still has to be made, and the mind has to sometimes step in, summon the will, and get on with it.

This trip for me has been a lot about getting on with it.  I’ve had some good times, some bad times, some hard times, but I’ve kept on with it, moving forward inch by inch.  This has definitely not been the felaheen romp through Europe that I envisioned months ago when I was sitting on a pile of cash and a lot of free time.   I could have played things a lot differently this winter, but somehow it has worked out.

One thing that I will take away from this trip, however, is the chance I had to reconnect with some of my Venetian friends.  And this afternoon, suddenly free to wander the streets for a few hours on a beautiful afternoon, I ended up in the best part of town, the Fondamente of Cannaregio, and stopped at a cafe to hear two guitar players sitting at a table playing gypsy jazz.  The sun was warm and golden, shimmering off the canal, the music was sweet, life was good.  I asked the guitar player if I could take a picture of him, and he joked, “New York Times, right?”  “No,” I said, “National Geographic.”  He laughed and we started talking music and suddenly I had a new friend.  Tony Greene.   From New Orleans….  Small world.   He’s been living here in Venice for 30 years.  Twenty minutes later my friend Michele showed up, looked over at the guitar player, and said, “Ciao, Tony”…

Small town.

I tried to imagine what that would be like, to move to Venice from the States and make it your permanent residence.  I have a friend in New Orleans who told me recently he could see himself moving to Venice and just disappearing.   Some strange connection between those two towns.  But that’s a topic for another time.

NB: The following post is an interlude, not a continuation of the cliff-hanging drama of the last post.  More on that story to come…

On Thursday night, thanks to the gracious invitation of friends from Hotel Danieli and MeetingEurope.com, I attended the Ballo Tiepolo, at the Palazzo Pisani-Moretta on the Grand Canal.  The Palazzo was built in the 15th century, and was expanded and restored in the 18th century.  The interior features many baroque details and frescoes, much of which feature the work of Giambattista Tiepolo, one of the greatest Venetian artists of the era, for whom the ball is named.

Il Tiepolo is unique in that not only is attention paid to details of period dress and furnishings, but the dances of the 18th Century are also led by a charismatic dancing-master named Roberto Barison, who stands a good six inches over most of the other guests as he leads them through the minuet, the contradanse, and other forms of the era.   Below he is pictured leading dancers at an earlier event in the week.

The guests hail from all over the world, much like the revelers at the Carnival of yore, when celebrants would flock from as far-off as England, and performers and musicians from Turkey and Romany would entertain guests with shenanigans, music, acrobatics, and card tricks.   Nowadays the distances have expanded, from Russia and the Far East to the United States…but on this night, only the odd accents, the labels on the wine bottles, and the lights illuminating the frescoes—and of course, the ubiquitous cell-phone cameras–would give away the illusion of another time.

I was pleasantly surprised by the images I captured that evening.   They have a different look from most of the rest of my Carnival work.  The light is softer, the colors more muted.  But there is a classical beauty here that I think truly evokes the nostalgia for a lost era that predominates the spirit of the Venetian Carnival.

My working title for the book on the Venetian Carnival is “Songs of Glories Long Since Past”, which comes from a line out of a song called “Saint Lucilia” by Percy Hill.  To me it evokes a yearning for times gone by that goes beyond nostalgia.  There is something about a collective memory, barely understood but strongly felt, which drives people to go to such elaborate lengths to step into a fantasy of that memory, as if to somehow walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before us and left their imprints on the consciousness of human history.  Attending a ball like Il Tiepolo is like stepping into a painting, living and breathing through the oil and gesso and hearing the music frozen in the cracks of paint.  The painting comes alive, begins to move; the scent of perfume, the sweetness of the stringed instruments, the swoosh of petticoats and the intrigue of stolen glances and raised eyebrows.

Yes, it’s a fantasy.  But isn’t it all a fantasy?  Wasn’t it a fantasy back then?  Isn’t every moment we live imbued with imagination and yearning for pleasure, beauty, fulfillment, love?  A hope that somehow we can make the unreal, the unrealized, real and tangible?

The spirit of Carnival takes many forms, in many lands, across many cultures.  It is a spirit as old as human consciousness, and it is all around us, all the time.  It does not always mean the same thing to all people, but it lives within all of us, in some shape or form.  Whether it be in the unstoppable samba beat on the streets of Brazil, all bare flesh and sweat and the kiss of a stranger’s lips; or in the second-line shenanigans going on right now down in New Orleans, plastic beads thrown from passing floats to invite the revelers to the dance…or perhaps it’s just a feeling on a particular night in some local watering hole in Middle America, when the band is hitting all the right notes and there is a feeling that something special is happening, and that anything is possible.  Maybe it’s just a good day when the sun is shining and the water at the swimming hole is cool and refreshing.  Or the adrenaline rush of a fast car, the sweaty skin-on-skin ecstasy of  young lovers, the being-in-the-zone feeling of a well-executed performance.  We all know that these times are ephemeral, that sooner or later the Carnival will pack up and move on…that this Carnival ride we call life itself only lasts for so long…and after we say, Carne Vale, farewell dear flesh…but while we are here, while this moment lasts, let us eat, drink, love, dance, and be merry.   For tomorrow, well, tomorrow never knows…One thing is for sure, there’s only so much of it you can handle before your body aches for Morpheus.

Many thanks to Francesca Ariella Rota for her help and hospitality and to Manuel Silvestri for providing me with contacts.

Il Grand Ballo di Tiepolo, Palazzo Pisani Moretta, Venice

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Sometimes, when things aren’t happening the way you want, it’s a good time to make friends.

As I mentioned in the last post, the first weekend of my arrival in Venice was marked by unusually cold weather, which put quite a damper on the opening festivities of Carnival.  Rather than waste my time in the press pool to take pictures in bad light of events I had already captured in warm weather and golden light upon my last visit, I opted instead to wander a few local bars with my friend Michele (in Italian, pronounced with a hard “c”). It was freezing out, but we often opted to stand outside the bars where there was a little more space and the smokers could smoke…and the red wine definitely helped to warm the blood.

Being a completely pedestrian city, Venice holds many opportunities for hail-fellow-well-met moments.  We would be standing in a bar or on the street eating cicchetti (something like tapas indigenous to Venice) and drinking ombras (tiny glasses of wine) when a friend would wander around, to much fanfare and greeting, more wine, introductions all around…and, in deference to my pitiful Italian skills, my new-found friends would oblige me by speaking English as much as possible.

The next day, rinse and repeat, this time with darks.  Michele and I had arranged to meet at Caffe Florian at 8 PM to take some pictures of the Euro-crowd that hangs out there during Carnival in their elaborate costumes, but there wasn’t much happening so we started drinking vodka martinis with his friends Massimo, Manola, and Manuela.  After a few rounds and a broken glass to make the party official, we left, with a whopping bill, to get something to eat.  It was 11 PM in Venice, so I wasn’t thinking much, maybe some little trattoria somewhere, but Michele called ahead to a friend’s restaurant.  “You like steak or fish?” he asked me while on his cell as we exited Piazza San Marco.   Steak, I said.  “Okay, steak it is.   Si, Carne, per cinque.   Si, si, etc….”

Twenty minutes later we were on the backside of Venice in the Cannaregio district at a local hang-out spot called Timon.  We all sat down at a huge oak table by the window in the dining area, wine was opened and drunk…and then the food came out.   On a huge wooden platter, a side of beef the size of a bed-pillow, ringed with cauliflower, white beans, roasted peppers, and radicchio came steaming across the restaurant, with a big basket of fries, or papate frite, right behind.  I had no idea how five people, two of them girls, were going to eat all that food.  But we did.  Down to the bone.

Then, grappa, and another, then to Manola’s beautiful apartment for a nightcap.  By this time the entourage included several workers from the restaurant as well.  Around 3:30 AM I stepped outside of myself and the sober part of me convinced the drunk part of me that nothing good was left to come of this night and I should find my way home through the labyrinth of Venice before the first light of dawn caught me regretting the entire evening.   And so I bid my adieus and walked the wet streets of Venice, accompanied only by the sound of the grit on the stones crunching against my feet.   A sublime note sounds in the soul at this hour, a hollow feeling left by the hubbub and commotion of tourism and quotidian life in Venice.  The ancient stones reassert themselves; the old city, nearly unchanged for 500 years, lets you into its soul.  You can almost feel the eyes of the city’s ghosts watching you as you make your way through the alleyways and campos.  Over one bridge…or was it two?  Left, or was it straight?  Well, it’s kind of left/straight; after all, there are few right angles in Venice.  End of story, I made it home, and slept most of the next day.

Amidst all these ephemeral good times, anxiety was growing inside me, as I still had no good pictures.  And access to the storied Ballo del Doge, the ultra-exclusive  masquerade ball which remained the one big event of Carnival for which I’d lacked coverage, was eluding me.  The press manager was giving me the runaround, a lot of we’ll see,we’ll call tomorrow, I have to speak with Antonia Sautter–the grande dame and organizer of the event–et cetera.  It was beginning to appear as if the main reason I had made this trip wasn’t going to pan out.   And so, as the days wore on and got closer and closer to the night of the ball, I became more and more nervous.  I was trotting the fine line between persistence and harassment with Federica the press agent, but I couldn’t give up.  Even so, as the days passed, I became more resigned to the possibility of an undesirable outcome, and then I began to lose motivation, and started to have a few of those “fuck all this bullshit” moments when I just absolutely didn’t care anymore.

“Surrender to the present moment”, my dad told me cryptically in a phone conversation.  He’s been reading a lot on the Kabbala lately, and he is teaching a class in church on spirituality.  In another life, I think my dad would have been a holy man, or a monk.  Anyway, though I’m down with all the Be-Here-Now thing, I also know that nothing happens without a little paranoia and persistence.   And so does my dad for that matter.  But at some point, and I took his point, you need to accept whatever is going to happen and make lemonade out of your lemons.

As it turned out, there had been a strange combination of miscommunication, mistaken identity, brinksmanship, stress, and drama going on around this whole situation, to which I hadn’t been privy at all.  Antonia Sautter likes to keep very firm control of the press surrounding her event so that it retains its air of exclusivity and so that the fantasy of the evening is not destroyed by a bunch of paparazzi.  Additionally, someone else had been causing trouble using similar credentials to mine, and had actually been thrown out of an earlier press conference.   The irony of all of this is that, Venice being the small place it is, all of my friends here were also friends with the press agent.  So they offered to make calls on my behalf, which was when the whole dirty story came out into the open.   My friend Edoardo called me on Thursday night and said, “Let’s met at Paradaiso Perdutto and I’ll tell you all about it.  It’s kind of a strange story.”

Tune into the next installment for more details, and for more photos.  Spoiler alert: I got some good ones…finally…

There is a great old cartoon from the New Yorker that my dad sent to me many years ago.  In the pictures, two bums are sitting on a park bench, and one of them is saying to the other, “I’ve had a lot of great ideas in my life; I just lacked follow-through.”

I know quite a few guys like that old bum; in fact, I sometimes feel like that guy myself.  I get ideas for projects, stories, and photographic series all the time.  They spill out of my brain and assemble themselves in minutes… sometimes I envision the concept behind the project, the logistics, the lighting; sometimes it’s just an idea for a story that seems somehow poignant or relevant or just visually compelling. Some are vague, half-formed visions based on dreams, myths, archetypes; or particular ways of envisioning a particular place.  Many of these projects I have developed and brought to life as exhibitions, magazine articles, small-run books, etc.  Others remain works in progress, items on the list of things I should finish.  Others, I fear, are doomed never to be completed.  Anyone who looks through my website can tell that there are a lot of half-baked or nearly fully-formed collections floating around my workspace–and those are only the ones I have decided to post.

Then there are stories that I have been waiting years to begin.  Stories that I have held in my imagination for years, stories that are close to my soul and essential pieces of the puzzle that is my artistic journey.  I might not have taken a single picture or written anything more than simple ideas around them, but I know they will be major bodies of work in my future.  In a way, the knowledge that these adventures await me keeps me looking forward to the future; but at the same time they bring about a sense of frustration, as they always seem to get postponed, and postponed.

Generally I put my trust in the dharma of the gestation period; when the time is right, when the idea is ready to be birthed, it will happen.  So I am content, just barely, to wait.  Right now it seems my left brain is at the wheel, reminding me that I have unfinished work to do on other projects.  Projects that I need to complete before I can dive into new ones with my full attention.

Of course, the question arises, when exactly is a project finished?  Some projects might warrant no more than a small magazine article.  Or maybe an exhibition, of perhaps 15-20 images.  For me, however, the ultimate goal of every photographic project is a book.  I’m happy to do articles and exhibitions, but until the project is fully realized as a book, the project remains, well, an open book…

Right now I am in the course of completing two bodies of work that have been hanging around too long, unfinished.  There is my After the Storm series, which is about the life, culture, and experience of surfing on the wild Atlantic coast of North Carolina; and there is my project on Carnival, on which I have been working for the last five years.  The surfing project is nearly complete:  I have a publisher, a designer, a retoucher, and a printing house all lined up, and all that remains is a certain amount of fundraising, marketing, and babysitting the project until the book is launched.

The Carnival project is a little more complex.  Although I had originally conceived it as a journey through Carnival celebrations around the world, I have recently come to realize that such a task is too much for one person, and I have begun talks with a number of colleagues in the industry about creating a larger book with the work of many photographers, spanning dozens of Carnival celebrations around the world.   This will free me to complete a book on my own about the Venetian Carnival, and also contribute my work from Venice, New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro to the larger book.

Later this spring and summer, when I have hired an intern and have time at home to organize things, many of these images will be available through the National Geographic Image Collection, at www.ngstock.com.   Work on the book will probably take a couple of years, as we figure out the scope of the project and decide whether or not there are any holes in the coverage that need to be filled by delaying production one more year to cover other Carnivals.  Other questions, such as whether or not to include festivities which are called such as the Notting Hill Carnival in England, and the Brooklyn Carnival in New York, which are not held during the traditional pre-Lenten calendar period, but are nonetheless derived culturally from other Carnivals–the Trinidadian carnival in particular–remain to be discussed and decided.

Bearing all that in mind,  I now find myself back in Venice, looking for the missing pieces that will transform my collection of images here into a fully-formed book.   In theory, I only need about 10 more pictures, and I know fairly specifically what kinds of pictures I need, and how I want the book to come across conceptually.   The Venetian Carnival at street level can sometimes seem a bit of a tawdry affair, the streets crammed with tourists wearing plastic masks and cheap costumes, taking photos of each other in front of canals; vendors from Eastern Europe and South America selling masks made in China in every campo, square and strada.  But behind these rather embarrassing scenes of Venice prostituting its own heritage and history for a few euros; behind closed doors, there are elaborate masquerade balls, dancers in period dress, and a whole coterie of aficionados living out a fantasy of an imagined past, the glory of the old Venice, the great Serenissima, a kingdom which had an unbroken succession of Doges for over 1000 years, and a Carnival which at its height was the largest, most extravagant, and most decadent party in all of Europe.  And, in this newly re-imagined Carnival, the extravagance of progressive theater, lighting, acrobatics, pyrotechnics, and modern design have taken the European aesthetics and archetypes and turned them into something truly magical, fully realized in only a small number of events of the Venetian Carnevale, most particularly La Grand Cavalchina and Il Ballo del Doge, the penultimate balls of the modern Carnival.

So it is behind these closed doors, into the dream of Carnival, that I am seeking to step.  I have secured invitations and gotten information on press tickets to several of these masquerade balls, and am still working on access to Il Ballo del Doge. To me, this represents the missing piece to my story of Carnevale, and I will not be able to   step into the dream/fantasy zone that I am interested in capturing until I have secured my invitations and constructed my own personal charade.  In order to more discreetly blend into the masquerade, I will need to put together a suitable costume, one which will allow me to move about with ease but not put the participants and guests at unease.   I need to become one of them, only carrying a camera as part of my mask, my mirror, my disguise.

The weather here in Venice has been exruciatingly cold the past week or so.  The northeast wind known as the “Bora”–which blows down from Siberia with a speed, frigidity, and ferocity that literally has the power to knock you over–has been raging, although it appears it is on the decline and temperatures are beginning to rise by a few degrees.  The official opening ceremonies of Carnival have come and gone, and though I had press access to get decent shots, poor light and the knowledge that I could never get images as good as the ones I got in 2008 kept me from bothering too much with them.  Instead, I spent yesterday afternoon with  local photographer Michele Crosera, drinking wine around a couple of bars in the Rialto district, and enjoying cichetti: bite-sized treats similar to Spanish tapas, which are an essential ingredient to a Venetian pub crawl.   While explaining cichetti to me, Michele and his assistant Giovanni schooled me on the ancient maritime ties between Spanish and Venetian culture, even noting certain words only used in Venice which are similar to Spanish words.

For now, then, I have little to show other than some legwork, but tonight I will be meeting with Michele to take some pictures at Caffé Florian, which is always a good source for images of Carnival.  If I have time, I will post some.  But thinks are likely to get fairly busy over the next few days, so it may have to wait.   Until then, ciao, and buona fortuna.