Venice, a tourist city? Indeed, but much more than that: a mysterious city.
The bridges, the passages, the silent row of the gondolas, the humidity on the skin, the amorous encounters, the big white squares at the end of the black streets, everything is baroque, black and white, just the opposite of the American accent of the idiot tourists. First of all, the Venetians have lived there fully, sensually, in the suffocating heat of summer, later in the icy cold of winter, where carnival masks have been nothing more than a wonderful way to join the sighs of bridges, the smell of water, the mystery of the night and the light of day ...
All this is reborn in the wonderful non-tourist photographs that Manel Esclusa made there in his younger years, a kind of journey of the senses within the silence and the emptiness of the splash of water ... His images are the true Venice: The city where we would like go forget the vulgarity of the rest of the world! Its black and white is the ideal metaphor of what photography is ... Yes, truly, a wonderful series.
Bernard Plossu, may 2001, Manel Esclusa. Silencis Latents
