One man almost single-handedly defined the photographic image of Venice in the late twentieth century: Fulvio Roiter (1926–2016). His output during a long career was prolific and varied, but he repeatedly returned to Venice, on which he published an astonishing fourteen books (I surveyed his publications up to 2002 – there are probably several others by now).[1]
Over the years, his approach remained consistently simple and direct. He used 35mm film and worked without flash or other non-ambient lighting. From his third book on Venice onwards, he worked exclusively in colour, using slide film to increase contrast and saturation. Since these films are slow and therefore difficult to use in low light, and Roiter usually shot handheld, most of his colour images have shallow depth-of-field (that is, a narrow area in focus), an effect that Roiter skilfully uses to isolate subjects from the background or to create unexpected emphases.
Roiter was strongly influenced by the humanist photojournalism of the 1950s, the period in which his career began. From his first book about Venice and throughout his work, cats are content, children are playful, and tourists are for the most part respectful, appreciative and enthusiastic.[2] In an interview towards the end of his life, he underlined his continuing hostility towards ‘critical’ photography, referring specifically to Oliviero Toscani, who was commissioned in 1999 to draw attention to the problems created in Venice by mass tourism.
[Y]ou do not see Venice in his advertising campaign. There are two dogs mating, sewer rats ... New York too has dogs mating and sewer rats ... They say it’s “a way of drawing attention to problems” … “Problems” is a word for intellectuals that is fashionable nowadays. I don't photograph them.
Jean-Michel Folon describes Roiter's philosophy on the dust jacket of Living Venice:
He has not taken pictures of TV antennae or of automobile wreckage; he has not taken pictures of war. The 20th century does not exist for Fulvio. He moves across the world and doesn’t see its folly. From Umbria to Brazil he goes on his way in search of a lost secret, in search of a light, in search of a warm human touch, in search of an eye in whose glance one may read – innocence newly found.
Roiter’s attitude is also revealed in his comments on technique, which recall the programmatic statements of Henri Cartier-Bresson – for example:
To photograph a wonderful masker from up close … is not difficult; on the contrary, it is all too easy. The difficult thing, in fact the true task … [is to obtain in fleeting circumstances] images of immediate and rigorous visual force. … The eyes and the camera are [held] in a state of constant readiness [from the unpaginated afterword to Carnevale a Venezia: tra maschera e ragione].
Roiter produced no less than four publications on Carnival, and unfortunately, many of the images contained therein fail his own criterion of judgement. But since these books are – pace Roiter – exemplary of certain 'problems' in the representation of Venice, I have chosen them as case studies. They are: Carnevale a Venezia: tra maschera e ragione (Carnival in Venice: between the mask and reason, 1981); Carnevale (1985); Magic Venice in Carnival (1987); and Venezia in Maschera (Venice Masked, 1995).
The first problem is that these books usually contain introductions and/or commentary written by others – as indeed is the case for all Roiter's books on Venice. The text may refer to the image content in the sense of identifying particular buildings featured in the photographs, but it frequently ignores Roiter’s visual emphases: i.e. the text draws attention to features that Roiter has placed out of focus. In the later books, the introductory texts do not refer to Roiter at all.[3] Instead, the writers present cursory reviews of Venetian history and/or the history of Carnival, with scattered quotations, purple prose and incompetent translations in French, English and/or German.[4] Certainly none of the writers make any attempt to review the history of photographic representations of the city, or to place Roiter in it, although a few make casual references to famous painters.[5] The nadir is reached in Magic Venice in Carnival, in which the text is by Carlo della Corte and a translator who wisely chooses to remain anonymous.
Inside the Whirlpool of the Carnival of Venice rather than tiring oneself one is brought to life, if only artificially, by the thousands of visitors. These visitors, perhaps in a confused way, continue to imagine the carnival as handed down to us by Gentile Bellini with his processional train ablaze with colours, or through Carpaccio’s image of gondolas coloured like dodgem cars. The world-wide success of Venice was due to this incredible coup d’oeil, this sea of colours arriving in St Mark’s Square like a whirlwind and then spreading everywhere, impregnating water and walls.
This city was, perhaps, the most colourful in the world, and the whole world wanted it this way, rushing there, forever prolonging the moment when, like a demiurge, the carnival filled it with the most dazzling of colours.
History is invoked, but in an indiscriminate and perfunctory manner, and only insofar as it underwrites the writer’s overinsistent evocation of a ‘whirlwind’ of colour. A diligent reader might note that anyone whose image of Carnival derives from the work of Bellini and Carpaccio would indeed be ‘confused’, since the paintings referred to depict religious processions – the polar opposite of the Carnival experience. Clearly such niceties are both beyond the grasp of the author and besides the point here.
With few exceptions, Roiter’s Carnival books concentrate on isolated human subjects or small groups of subjects, mostly young adults, who almost invariably wear a costume or a mask. The few attempts to render crowds are impressionistic and show them as homogeneous masses of indistinguishable individuals. There is no literal overlap of images, but thematically the Carnival books are monotonous. Every new photograph asserts the same thing, over and over again. There is no evolution or inflection.
Ivo Prandin, author of the introduction to Venice Masked, urges us not to seek:
the real Masks in the tumultuous carnival crowd in St. Mark’s square: you may not find them in the multitude. Instead, we should look in remote calli, silent and shady banks, little bridges under which a gondola slowly slides away, like human life wandering in the city maize [sic] [p. 8].
The problem with this argument is that thirty-five of the forty-six images in Venice Masked are identifiably located in and around Piazza San Marco. Similarly, in Carnevale a Venezia: tra maschera e ragione, if we exclude the sixteen plates of theatrical performances, twenty-seven of the remaining thirty-seven images appear to have been taken in San Marco or its immediate environs. Of the other ten, six are obviously staged compositions, which were probably set in quieter areas because it would have been impossible to keep the background clear elsewhere. Another two (not by Roiter) are shots of boats, taken from a distance on telephoto lenses.
It would be foolish to object to Carnival images on the basis that they are posed, since posing is the whole point. What matters is the quality of the direction and the acting, the complexity of the role assumed, and the intensity of the connection between photographer and subject – as in Ed van der Elsken's Love on the Left Bank, or Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Roiter’s technical prowess has never been in doubt, but in these works his script and direction are simplistic. The drama rarely amounts to more than empty affirmation (‘Look at me!’) and Roiter does not actively engage his subjects.[6] To be more precise, he never challenges the adequacy or credibility of their performance. Nor do they challenge him. In Roiter’s Carnival, no-one is ugly, tired, drunk, miserable, hostile, uncooperative or even indifferent. Worse, for the most part Roiter is not interested in the backstage aspects of the experience; that is, in how the illusion is created and sustained.[7]
The extent of the lost opportunity is suggested by the few images of children, which stand out precisely because the subjects have not yet learnt how they are supposed to respond to a camera.[8] Some of the shots of professional theatrical performances are also impressive, but for the opposite reason: that is, they show people capable of fully immersing themselves in their roles.
Everyone has to make a living, and Roiter’s Carnival books probably tell us more about the relationship between the publishing and tourism industries than they do about his individual photographic vision. I remain hopeful that an intelligently edited retrospective of his larger career will reveal an artist who understood both the nature of his own talent and the history of the city he loved.[9]
[1] Venise à fleur d’eau (1954); Venezia Viva (Venice is Alive, 1973); Essere Venezia (Living Venice, 1977); La Laguna (The Lagoon, 1978); L’Oriente di Venezia (The Venetian Orient, 1980); Carnevale a Venezia: tra maschera e ragione (Carnival in Venice: between the mask and reason, 1981); Carnevale (1985); Magic Venice in Carnival (1987); La Mia Venezia (My Venice, 1994); Venezia in Maschera (Venice Masked, 1995); Il Palazzo Ducale (The Ducal Palace, 1997); Venezia 1891–2001 (2000); Il Lido (with Lou Embo, 2001); Burano: Isola del merletto e del colore (Burano: Island of Lace and Colour, 2002). There are likely other publications – I doubt that Roiter himself could have recited them all from memory.
[2] With the partial exception of the second book, Venezia Viva, which may have been intended by the publisher and editorial team as a riposte to Giorgio Lotti’s Venezia Muore [Venice is Dying, 1970]. Venezia Viva has extensive commentary, and the images touch upon themes of pollution, conservation and restoration, but the best are informal portraits of gondoliers, labourers and children playing.
[3] Venezia 1891–2001 is an exception to this rule among the other titles. It contains an illuminating introduction by Italo Zannier, who is an expert on the history of photography in Venice (and whose various publications were crucial aids to my own research). Venezia Viva and Carnevale a Venezia: tra maschera e ragione also contain brief, general descriptions of collaboration between Roiter and the writer(s). Also, Roiter’s two most successful books on Venice, Essere Venezia and La Mia Venezia, are at least graced with texts by competent writers.
[4] Roiter often contributes a brief preface or afterword to his books, and/or provides a table of technical information, which lists lenses, exposures and films used for each shot, along with locations (although not dates - significantly, since I suspect the later books recycle earlier images from his archives).
[5] Again, the notable exception to this rule among Roiter's other publications is Italo Zanier's text for Venezia 1891–2001.
[6] His reliance on telephoto lenses is telling, since they allow him to photograph at a safe distance from his subjects. Since Roiter helpfully supplies technical information on each shot, it is possible to calculate the proportion of images taken on such a lens in the four books on Carnival. Taking the books in chronological order, this figure is 70%, 80%, 50% and 66% respectively. (Perhaps I am being a little unfair here, since, for the purposes of this calculation, I count a 50mm lens as a moderate telephoto, but many shots were taken on significantly longer lenses.)
[7] There are only two images that show ‘technical support staff’: a theatre wardrobe assistant in plate 32 of Carnevale a Venezia: tra maschera e ragione, and a maskseller in plate 27 of Carneval. In addition, there are a couple of images showing subjects applying make-up, but in both cases they are adding final touches and are thus already fully ‘in character’.
[8] For example, the child distracted by a firework in plate 47 of Carnevale a Venezia: tra maschera e ragione, which Roiter’s afterword also identifies as a crucial image.
[9] I did not have the opportunity to see the exhibition ‘Fulvio Roiter, Fotografie 1948–1978’, which toured Northern Italy c. 2003, but among the non-Venetian published work I would certainly recommend Ombrie: Terre de Saint François, which deservedly won the Prix Nadar, and remains one of the highpoints of Roiter’s career. In this book, texts written by or about Francis of Assisi are juxtaposed with images of rural Umbria in the 1950s. The insistence on ‘timelessness’ is no less aggressive than in the books on Carnival, but it is deployed to much better effect than in Venice, partly because (as in Roiter’s work on Spain in the 1950s) the relationship between text and image is more interesting.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment