Serenissima Venice in Winter
Essay by Frank van Riper Photographs by Frank van Riper and Judith Goodman
♦ The look and the life of the water-borne city and its citizens, cloaked in the quiet romance of winter
♦ Of interest to any collector of fine art photography, travelers, and lovers of Italy
In Serenissima: Venice in Winter, Frank Van Riper and Judith Goodman provide a stunning combination of fine journalistic photography with lyrical text to capture the visual magic that occurs when "the most serene republic" reclaims itself as a living, breathing city that once more becomes a place "of water-filled streets,velvet shadows and footsteps echoing off paving stones in the post-midnight silence."
Six years in the making and shot entirely in black and white, the images in this stunning publication combine a sense of architecture with an instinct for the captured moment in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and the great Italian photojournalist Gianni Berengo Gardin. Frank Van Riper's essay shows the same literary mastery that won him a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and reflects the dreamlike quality of the photographs while also acknowledging the mystery and magic for which Venice is famous.
Frank Van Riper and Judith Goodmanare a husband and wife team whose specialty is location portraiture and documentary photography. Van Riper's photographs are in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. He is also a photography journalist for the Washington Post.
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