An explanation of the rare sighting above, and some more photos, will be included in my next post.
An explanation of this post's reference to the great Venetian photographer Fulvio Roiter may be seen below, in one of the many works currently on display until 26 August at Casa dei Tre Oci on Giudecca. The image below is a very poor approximation of the actual photograph, which is really worth seeing in person, along with all of the others, at Tre Oci.
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| Verso il cimitero di San Michele, 1961, by Fulvio Roiter, from the book Fulvio Roiter: fotografare Venezia |
Thank you very much, Steven, for this photo. I thought such a final journey in gondola towards the San Michele cemetery was no more possible in our modern times. However, I suppose it is rather a rare event. Or may be a revival of a former tradition? Was this gondola sailing alone or followed by a procession of other gondolas or boats? Very often, there is a large black motor boat used for burials moored along the Rio dei Mendicanti near the Ospedale Civile, and it is not so rare to see a funeral procession towards San Michele. But I have never seen a gondola with rowers and a coffin in the North part of the laguna. Romantic composers, painters and writers used and overused the image of gondolas and death, Venice and death, etc. However this photo in its simplicity is really moving.
ReplyDeleteThe parallelism between the two photos is amazing. The Roiter’s photo seems older than 1961, probably because of the black fabric at the stern of the gondola, very “fin de siècle” (19th century of course). But at the beginning of the 60s, great black fabrics were still used for funerals. We have forgotten that time.
I suppose the exhibition at Casa Tre Oci displays in priority many black and white photos by Roiter in his early career. It is useful to remind us that Fulvio Roiter was not only the photographer and the popularizer of the revival of the Carnival with the secondary standardization of the photos of this world touristic event ((I saw him taking pictures during the Carnival in 1982), but also a great Italian photographer and a great witness of the rural life and rural poverty in Italy after the WW2. You are very lucky to have the opportunity to visit this exhibition. (From Auvraisien)
And all these months later, Auraisien, I still have yet to see the Roiter show--though I will before it leaves this month.
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