Photos by Harrys Pourouzidis
Article by Harrys Pourouzidis
It was six in the morning, and the vaporetto to Venice was almost empty. Its few passengers were working people whose day begins before dawn, and I was a stranger with a camera in my hand, while the rain seemed to whisper: “Begin.”
The streets were wet and empty, like a stage before the actors enter. “Venice is a city to be loved in the rain,” someone had once told me, and there, standing before Piazza San Marco, the prophecy came true. The bridges — so many bridges — connected not only islands, but moments, thoughts, and centuries.
I too lost myself, like another Theseus, inside that wondrous labyrinth, where every corner offered a different experience and stirred my photographic hunger, rekindling a passion for images that had long seemed to have fallen asleep. My feet felt light with the spirit of Marco Polo’s wanderings, while through my heart moved the romantic breath of Giacomo Casanova, awakened by the atmosphere of that magical city.
Photography that morning was not documentation. It felt like memory before it had even happened. Every click was an attempt to hold on to something already slipping away.
It was six in the morning, and the vaporetto to Venice was almost empty. Its few passengers were working people whose day begins before dawn, and I was a stranger with a camera in my hand, while the rain seemed to whisper: “Begin.”
The streets were wet and empty, like a stage before the actors enter. “Venice is a city to be loved in the rain,” someone had once told me, and there, standing before Piazza San Marco, the prophecy came true. The bridges — so many bridges — connected not only islands, but moments, thoughts, and centuries.
I too lost myself, like another Theseus, inside that wondrous labyrinth, where every corner offered a different experience and stirred my photographic hunger, rekindling a passion for images that had long seemed to have fallen asleep. My feet felt light with the spirit of Marco Polo’s wanderings, while through my heart moved the romantic breath of Giacomo Casanova, awakened by the atmosphere of that magical city.
Photography that morning was not documentation. It felt like memory before it had even happened. Every click was an attempt to hold on to something already slipping away.
My mind filled with thoughts, just as my camera filled with images. The photographs I took became the foundation for something beyond the image itself. They became fragments of a rhythm I could not yet name, but gradually began to recognize. I found myself moving with the pulse of hurried passers-by, waiters, and small schoolchildren running to class before the city’s hotel breakfasts came to an end, with all the commotion such endings tend to bring.
There, within that rain-soaked morning, my eye was drawn to an elderly gentleman dressed as though he knew someone would ask to photograph him. I asked for a portrait. He gave it to me with a smile I still carry. When I showed him the photograph, his eyes lit up. An embrace. A thank-you. And an email address that turned out to be wrong.
It does not matter. Some encounters are meant to remain exactly where they belong: inside the moment.
And yet that brief, spontaneous meeting still had another story to reveal. Later, looking more carefully at the photograph, I noticed the inscription behind him: the entrance to the Galleria of Palazzo Cini. I searched. I contacted the Foundation. And I learned that the man I had photographed was Mr. Teso, for many years the personal attendant of Count Vittorio Cini, founder of the Cini Foundation, and later the caretaker of the palace that now houses the gallery.
His figure took on a new depth. He was not merely an authentic Venetian presence. He was a bearer of memory, the guardian of a cultural treasure. A man who had served the quiet dignity of History — and whom fate, for those who believe in such things, had drawn into my path.
When the others arrived — the dance group, the friends, my daughter — the city changed. It became a modern Tower of Babel: crowded, touristic, almost suffocating. I sat on a bench by the pier and thought it through.
This place, so masterfully built upon water fifteen hundred years ago for the sake of survival, grew into the greatest commercial centre in Europe. It became a magnet for wealth, art, and power, and to this day it draws thousands of visitors without pause, each arriving for their own reasons. History itself, then, seems to demand that Venice be noisy and restless, filled with multitudes moving through its streets and canals.
Yes, at first the crowds bothered me. Until I understood. I too was another pilgrim of that same beauty, grateful that I had already kept my own Venice. The Venice of rain. The Venice of early morning and empty streets. The true one.
The following morning, the sky welcomed me once again with magnificent colour and drama. Then came Burano, Torcello, and Murano, island of the famed glassmakers. Little villages that seemed to have stepped out of a canvas by Titian: colourful, quiet, like a stage set waiting for an old song.
I walked slowly. Not only to photograph, but to remember what it means to observe without purpose. And there is beauty in looking at the world around you — both for the images it offers and for the truths and lies those images may conceal.
I watched the clouds drift slowly while, beneath them, the housewives’ laundry danced on the lines. I saw smiles searching for a way out, and centuries-old streets drinking deeply after the autumn rain. Shadows on walls teasing the passers-by. Stone benches freezing the bones of anyone who trusted them. Wrinkles on faces still wondering, even now.
Jesolo
Burano
Torcello & Murano
On the night of the performance, I followed her steps. The preparation. The walk toward the square. The dance. The moment when the new generation takes up the baton — not only of tradition, but of time itself.
I felt something shift inside me. As though I were no longer the one showing the way, but the one who lights it for a little while, then quietly fades behind her.
There are no photographs of the dance. Some things should not be trapped inside a frame. You let them pass through you. Like a step that no longer follows yours, but moves beyond it.
And it was there that I understood: I had not travelled to see Venice. I had travelled to feel it pass through me.
