Dreaming Venice

I was just in Venice from November 8, 2007 to November 14, 2007, and it was very cold weather, bone-chilling and damp at night, but the city made you forget the cold with its beauty and uniqueness. It is a magical city of dreams, unreal and ethereal. While there I bought this little book with its wonderful evocative color photographs that make the city come to vivid life. These are stunning memorable shots of the city like no other. Venice shrouded in rare snow storms, with flood waters in San Marco Square, scenes at night along the canals, the Bridge of Sighs, the Bacino, water pageants, gondolas, the Rialto Bridge, reflections of the sinking houses on the canals, the Grand Canal, colonnades, baroque churches with great art, quiet secret gardens, cloisters and gardens, the stone wells that are everywhere, the lion symbols, the Doge's Palace. Two glorious churches among a hundred are Santi Giovanni e Paolo and La Basilica della Salute (the dome presently covered in scaffolding). Venice is a dying city, but its glories live in your memory forever in these pictures: the library in San Marco Piazza, , the marble statuary, the palazzos, the campos, seagulls, the feast days and Regatta Storica, the celebration of oared boats, Carnevale with its scary costumes and masks, magical sunsets, the city at night, and magnificent fireworks displays. The camera of Frenando Bertuzzi has caught in his lens the shimmering city where life is more fantastic and glorious than in any other city in the world.

This lovely book combines photos and text, in Italian and English, to remind all lovers of this historic, artistic and romantic place of their enchanted time there. It is a fitting tribute to La Serenissima, by people who know and lover her.

The most beautiful little book on Venice I have seen... The pictures are exquisitely taken. The composition of the pictures, perfect and the gold and rose colours of the city are gorgeous. If you want to see Venice as it perhaps once was, and perhaps in some areas still is, then this is the book to get. The first sentence in the book sums it up... 'Venice is a place in which you never know where dream ends and history begins'. The book is magical. Definately a book to pick up again and again.

For those whose hearts have a special place for the intangible feeling of the spirit of Venice this fine book of photographs will surely satisfy. As Ivo Prandin explains in a short but pertinent essay 'Venice is a place in which you never know when dream ends and history begins. There is no clear boundary between imagination and reality'. And then the pages unfold with the curiously unique photographic monograph of Venice as seen through the talented eye and camera of Fernando Bertuzzi. Contained in this book are some of the more 19th century Romantically informed photographic compositions of the city of Venice ever published. Bertuzzi frames his locations and his subjects much the way the 19th century Venetian artists painted them, electing to wait for just the right moment of light, the right degree of cloud cover, the pools of reflective water left by a passing rain. The canals have never appeared more functional as the sole source of transportation nor have the varied ironwork grills and ornamentation of cloistered homes been more creatively captured. Here are the back corners of the endlessly fascinating city as well as the painfully studied moments of solitude of St Mark's Square. The collection is rich in color but richer in mood and atmosphere. This is the Venice few of us see unless, like Bertuzzi, we have lived there all our lives. It is a magnificent journey for the eye and the spirit. Highly recommended. In Italian and English. Grady Harp, January 06