I date the beginning of my project to 2008, even though I hardly made any noteworthy images that year and the following two. My stay during that first late spring was brief and frustrating: too many tourists and too much noise. Finding silence within the canals felt utopian.

When I committed seriously to the task of photographing Venice, a few years had passed. I went back for a whirlwind, three-day trip in late winter to attend an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci at the breathtaking Accademia, and in that short stay something changed. The weather was different—rain and fog dominated the mornings. Overcast skies made the light consistent, even, and perhaps a little mysterious. I felt that these conditions, paired with the absence of mass tourism, were far more ideal to capture what I had in mind: to present what makes this city iconic without stain. Like everyone before me—even prior to the invention of photography, when brush-to-canvas or pencil-to-paper were the preferred methods—I began to capture some of Venice’s most notable buildings: structures and historical areas that Canaletto himself had depicted in dozens of his paintings. I walked where every photographer of note ever did. The work produced ultimately felt stale and I began to lose heart.

This exercise of sorts, and the work that came with it continued until I made a conscious decision to depart from the beaten path. Starting in 2013, I began to experiment with longer exposures in a technical effort—i.e., something I could do on-site with my camera and not with post-processing trickery—to eliminate any distraction from my images. I decided that no passerby, animal or moving boat should be present in my compositions. The objective was to show the urban landscape undisturbed. This shift of practice was gradual, but its point of departure was the moment I realized that icons such as the Basilica of San Marco, the Bridge of Sighs, the Gondola, and the Rialto Bridge—to name only a few—no longer resonated or aligned with what I was looking for in terms of developing a project. Despite their colossal beauty, I decided to archive those images. 

The more I walked the edges of Venice—experiencing where and how Venetians live—and traveled to its surrounding islands, the more I fell in love with what I consider to be the city’s truest icon: the Venetian lagoon. After sixteen years photographing in Venice, what I am offering are images of areas untouched by tourism and landscapes unique to the fragile ecosystem of the lagoon. Areas that represent the roots and livelihoods of Venetians and thus should remain protected and undisturbed. People in the publishing industry have called me audacious and a fool for choosing to make a book about Venice that has almost nothing of what is typically associated with the city. But there is indeed more to it than those iconic buildings and structures we have seen reproduced since time immemorial across every significant medium. The photographs in this book are my attempt at broadening the view.

For the past sixteen years, Alejandro Merizalde (born Ecuador, 1979) has been developing a large-scope project in Venice, Italy documenting its churches and the Venetian lagoon. He was granted the Emily Harvey Foundation Residency on three occasions, which allowed him to live and work in Venice for extended periods of time. His first book of photographs, 100 Churches of Venice and the Lagoon, was published by Damiani in 2021. His second title, Thirteen Venetian Gasoline Stations, a limited-edition artists' book in tribute to artist Ed Ruscha, was published in 2023. His photographs have appeared in publications and websites such as National Geographic and B&W Photography Magazine. His upcoming third book, to be published by 5 Continents Editions, is due for release in the autumn of 2025. He currently lives and works in Connecticut with his wife.

For photographs of his travels through Europe and the United States click here

For a look at his project during the pandemic lockdown click here