La Serenissima. Seen from Another Angle

If you have never been to Venice, don’t even read any further!

Venice is amazing, but you need to visit it at least once as a tourist – see and experience those widely published images of the city – before you could be ready to see Venice from another angle.

We’ve been to Venice several times and had no intention of visiting it again. It all happened, we believe, by divine providence and relatively suddenly on top of that!

Catrien and I celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary in 2006. As a special celebration we wanted to go somewhere and do something that we’ve never done before. We considered several exotic venues, but we were unable to work up any enthusiasm. Then Catrien came up with the idea of attending a photographic workshop. I thought she was a very good photographer, but she felt she needed some new and fresh ideas.

I was not too enthusiastic with the prospect of tagging along while she took photos. I’m doing it often anyway! But early in April 2006 I duly started to search the Internet for options. Many workshops are on offer. I printed out details about several workshops. None seemed to be what we were looking for. Then I came across SchoolOfSeeing.com. It had all the attributes we were looking for: Practical Techniques, Light and Shadows, Seeing Subjects, Reportage and Street Photography. But more important, the workshop was for very small groups – preferably for a single student!

Mario Mazziol is a world-renowned professional photographer, born and bred in Venice, worked and travelled all over the world, and is now semi-retired and back in Venice. He is passionate about photography and passionate about the Venice of the Venetians.

For more information on Mario, please click here.

As I read lately more and more about history, I became fascinated by the Venice Republic, known as La Serenissima – The Most Serene Republic - which lasted more than a thousand years. With Catrien on a photographic workshop, I would be able to visit the Correr Museum at leisure with visits to other relics from that time.

We pushed our luck a bit. For several reasons it would have been most opportune for us to have the workshop during the last week of April 2006. On such short notice we were delighted to find that Mario was available!

On the first morning Mario announced that the light is perfect for a visit to Burano. He invited me to tag along. I had other plans, but as I have never been to Burano I decided to join them. What a wonderful surprise! Mario knows the island intimately and we saw a colourful Burano where the tourists don’t go.

A word of warning though: Be prepared to spend eight hours or more on your feet! You could easily walk 15 to 20 kilometres per day.

During the evenings we had to search a bit for it, but we found every evening a true Venetian restaurant serving Venetian food at non-touristy prices.

When we got Catrien’s prints back from the laboratory it was quite clear to me how much her photographic skills improved after just one day on the workshop.

The second day was a public holiday with pomp and circumstance on Piazza San Marco. I wanted to follow my own itinerary, but waited for the procession and flag hoisting ceremony. Catrien’s reportage of the event, under Mario’s coaching, looks very professional to me!

Massive crowds descended on Venice for a day-visit because of the public holiday, but Mario took Catrien to a part of Venice where there were no tourists.

The last day Mario planned to visit the fresh produce and fish market in Venice. I tagged along and it is just amazing how much history is embedded all over Venice – you just need somebody knowledgeable to point it out to you. After the visit to the market I went my own way and Mario showed Catrien another side of Venice thriving without tourists. Catrien’s photographs tell the story.

I returned with much more respect for that mighty empire that operated from a group of small islands and dominated the known world; a democracy no less undemocratic that modern democracies; a democracy that allowed no single person to gain enough power to become a king or a dictator; a republic that could last for more than a thousand years and earn the accolade: La Serenissima!

To see a few of Catrien’s pictures, please click here.

Philip de Bruin