This past November I had the opportunity to revisit Venice, Italy, for the first time since I had lived there during the fall of 2001. I immediately indulged in one of my favorite activities from then: getting lost.
It is not difficult to get lost in Venice.
Losing one’s way, when accepted as an inevitability in this city, is part of its charm: it contributes to the mystique. The throngs of tourists clotting the narrow streets and alleys usually serve to keep one at least temporally grounded, if not spatially. However, a surprise turn of the corner, or a post supper stroll—particularly on a dreary night—is often all it takes to elude the masses. Once this has happened the avenues for losing oneself multiply.
Lacking familiar signs of modernity, such as cars, curtain walls, sidewalks, and signposts; and soaking up light until darkness bleeds out of every corner and crevice, the tight streets lead their traveler to get lost not only in space, but also time.
Unmoored from the familiar, the mind begins to drift with the feet. Back to the Renaissance as one of Palladio’s churches looms out of the murk, or to the Gothic of a small palazzo’s piano nobile, or to the medieval pattern of pathways and canals laid out among offshore mud reefs to provide some security against an uncertain and hostile world.
These images are from that first night back, when I was lost in Venice's chilly blanket of wet darkness.
© Zachary Tyler Newton // A Lurid San Giovanni di Malta
© Zachary Tyler Newton // Nocturnal Reflections on the Rio di San Antonin
© Zachary Tyler Newton // San Francesco della Vigna Looming Out of the Dark
© Zachary Tyler Newton // Rio de la Ca' en Duo 2
© Zachary Tyler Newton // Laundry Hanging in a Castello Courtyard
© Zachary Tyler Newton // Crossing the Rio dei Scudi e di San Ternita
© Zachary Tyler Newton // Rio de la Ca' en Duo 1
© Zachary Tyler Newton // Wet Night on the Steps of Gesuiti