This photographer is chasing the ‘ghosts' of Venice

CNN

15-02-2025

A gondola travels through the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, in 2019.
A deserted lagoon city, where humanity lives to the rhythm of nature and centuries-old sites sit peacefully alone.
It's not the first image most people would have of Venice in 2025. The floating city has become the global poster child for overtourism, with an estimated 30 million visitors descending each year, swamping the population of under 50,000.
But this peaceful city, where architecture and nature merge into one, is the vision presented by photographer Michael Kenna in his new book, 'Venezia. Memorie e Tracce,' or 'Venice. Memories and Traces.' The roof of St. Mark's Basilica in 1980.
The bilingual book contains around 120 black-and-white photos by Kenna, taken during his regular visits over the past four decades.
'It's one of those places you almost obsess about when you're not there,' he says.
The sinking city's lugubrious architecture and misty days lend themselves perfectly to Kenna's signature long-exposure images. While sleeping he would leave a camera on the roof of his hotel with an all-night exposure, to see what it picked up in the morning. Gondolas are reflected by the water in 1980.
Kenna's relationship with Venice started in the late 1970s, when he traveled there on a European rail trip with his then-girlfriend. They didn't intend to visit, but having traveled through France, Germany and Austria, they saw a train headed to Venice and decided to hop onboard.
'We got on with no expectations, no prior research, but in those days there were many students traveling, and someone would say, 'There's a campsite on the Lido,' ' Kenna says of Venice's beach island, which slots between the Adriatic and the city itself.
'We pitched our tent, got the boat back into town, went to dinner and there was a huge thunderstorm.' Columns are seen at night in Venice in 2022.
The boats returning to the Lido were canceled and the pair were stranded in Venice. They were bedding down at a vaporetto (waterbus) pontoon when some locals took pity on them and offered to put them up for the night. Of course, the storm had destroyed their tent, but that hardly mattered.
'The next morning, I remember getting up very early and walking through the streets,' says Kenna. 'It was completely empty, slightly misty and very, very beautiful. I supposed that's when the chemistry started to happen.'
Kenna hadn't brought a camera — he wasn't a professional photographer back then. But he returned in 1980 with a camera, ready to snap. As he was realizing, Venice was the perfect city for his aesthetic. A closeup of a hand at the St. Michael Cemetery in Venice in 2019. The bronze horses at St. Mark's Basilica in 2007.
'All my work is in black and white and Venice is such an atmospheric city,' he says. 'I started photographing in the daytime but found I was getting earlier and earlier. I loved photographing in the early morning when it was so calm and there was a tension between the darkness receding and the incoming day.
'In a sense I became a nocturnal photographer. There's something about the night in Venice — it's quite empty and full of atmosphere. Sometimes you feel you're almost in a theatrical production. You can hear sounds, footsteps, the water lapping, boats going by, but it's not filled with constant chatter.
'You can be quite solitary, almost lonely and can have this conversation with your subject matter.'
Communicating with his subject is something Kenna likes to do — despite first and foremost being a landscape photographer.
And with its centuries of history for pretty much every building, Venice is the perfect candidate for a deep and meaningful back and forth. Tables and chairs are clumped together during 'acqua alta,' or high tide, in 2019.
'The absolute beauty and mystery of this place, filled with memories and traces and remnants of the past … it's absolutely ideal. I could spend the rest of my life here,' he says.
Over the decades, visiting usually once a year, Kenna has leaned deep into Venice's mysterious side. Not only does he roam the city in search of empty squares, alleyways and canals to shoot his long-exposure images, but he has also sailed around the islands of the lagoon, capturing them once the tourists have left.
One photograph captures a small rowboat, seemingly drifting unoccupied just off land, its shimmering white color giving it a ghostly appearance. Another is of a trabocco , or spiderlike fishing contraption, at Chioggia, a working-class town in the far south of the Venice lagoon.
In one image, the tower of Murano's basilica of Saints Maria and Donato stands tall in the night sky, stars streaking overhead. Others show Torcello, the island in the north lagoon where Venice 'started' — this was the first inhabited island, before the port silted up and the residents moved south in the medieval period. Today, Torcello has only a handful of residents, and with traces of ruined buildings and spectacular churches standing in the middle of fields, it's eerie enough by day. The church of Santa Fosca, on the island of Torcello, in 2021.
'I'm a great believer in ghosts and spirits, traces and voices from the past and residual atmospheres,' says Kenna, who has spent entire nights shooting in graveyards and was in his element on a deserted nocturnal Torcello.
'I can't say I actually met up with a ghost, but one does feel that things are happening. Torcello is a wonderful place to wander around and believe that you're having these conversations with past presences,' he says.
It's that approach that sets Kenna's images apart from the myriad photo books of Venice. Rather than trying to shoot the city icons from a new angle, he goes deeper, embedding that unspoken narrative into his imagery.
He also interjects history with reality. Amongst the moody monochrome are pictures of the oil refinery and industrial zone at Marghera, on the mainland shore of the lagoon. Industrial facilities at Marghera in 2021.
The pictures — which start by approaching Venice from the sea, then zooming into the city and the islands before fading into nighttime darkness — quietly tell the story of Kenna's relationship with the floating city, too.
After that 1970s rail trip, Kenna returned in 1980 to photograph Venice, and one image from that first trip has made it into the book: of pali , the posts driven into the seabed to which docked boats are tethered.
But this is no ordinary shot of a marina. Kenna's image is taken at night, using a long exposure. In the foreground are the stakes, reflected in the lagoon waters and seemingly dangling into infinity. Boats sailing past in the distance create a horizon despite the dark. This image — which Kenna says 'the universe conspired' to create — took a 10- or 20-minute exposure, though he can use exposures of up to 12 hours to create his nighttime vistas in which boats zigzag across the still water against the statuesque buildings. 'I love to photograph things we can't actually see,' he says of his signature style. 'I like to think it's the presence of absence.' Canal poles known as pali rise out out of the water in 1980.
Venice of course is a city with more history than most, and Kenna's photos tease the stories and feelings out across the pages. There are the bronze horses astride the Basilica of St. Mark, nostrils flaring — the originals were Roman, looted by the Venetians from Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1204 CE.
There are the empty, nighttime Procuratie — the porticoed walkways around St. Mark's Square, started by the Venetians during the days of the Republic days and finished by Napoleon when he invaded in 1797. During the day they're crowded with tourists, but at night, you can almost hear the footsteps echoing in Kenna's photos.
His shots of the empty Arsenale — the old Republic's shipyard, which used to churn out galleons in mere days, and now hosts the Biennale arts festival — hum with history. 'There are residual stories in the atmosphere that I try to photograph,' he says.
'I like to view my images as invitations for individuals to enter the rectangle and create their own story. There are many wonderful photographers who can photograph people well. I'm not one of them. I'm drawn to that absence.' Crosses are seen at the St. Michael Cemetery in 2006.
Flip through the book and you'll be amazed that nothing has changed in the city — the four decades of photos look like they could all have been taken yesterday.
Of course, in reality, Venice is completely different today than it was in the 1970s. Since Kenna's first trip it has succumbed to overtourism, the climate crisis means that high tides have become more frequent, and an exodus of locals means that the city can sometimes feel hollowed out. Yet its spirit remains — and Kenna traces his memories by navigating Venice by night, or using those long exposures to blur the modern issues.
'Instead of thousands of tourists you get empty urban landscapes,' he says of his shots which have exposures of up to an hour. St. Mark's Square is flooded in 2019.
But he says that his deepening relationship with the city is like one with a person.
'When we meet people over years and years, we may start off the same, but it rapidly goes deeper — there's this history behind it. I find that's the situation with Venice. It's changed but I can remember being here last week, 15 years ago, 35 years ago. I can still find new places but I have those associations as well as new associations. It's a constant dialogue.'
Kenna has produced over 90 books so far in his career and aims to present a narrative rather than just beautiful photos. In Venice's case, he says, it's situating the city within the wider lagoon, with trips to tiny islands, shots from far offshore, and even glimpses of the mainland.
'I tried to travel to as many of the little islands as possible, and tried to present Venice almost as an outsider who came to Venice from the sea would see it,' he says. The bell tower at the Church of St. Martin in 2021.
'(The book) approaches from the islands, sees the structures, gets onto mainland Venice, wanders round and ends up at night. It's listening to echoes, traces and memories, connecting with the city without thousands of tourists.'
His vision of the city is inevitably very different to that of the millions of tourists who hit the lagoon every summer. Some have little time to get to know Venice, and although Kenna says the major sites are a must, he suggests leaving time to wander, too.
'The important thing is extracting yourself from the crowds and spending time in a more solitary fashion wandering the outskirts of the place,' he says. 'Then get off 'mainland' Venice and visit the less popular islands. Burano and Murano are extremely touristy, but if you start your adventures at 8 p.m. you have a whole different feeling for Venice than if you're stuck in San Marco in the middle of the day with the rest of the world.' A long-exposure photo of Ponte della Canónica, a bridge in Venice, in 2022.
And that feeling might lead to a lasting relationship with the city. Many visitors today spend less than a day and leave, taking home only memories of the crowds. But stay longer, and you may end up feeling like Kenna.
'It's just a magnetic, beautiful, mysterious place that you have to visit in your lifetime, and you do fall in love,' he says.
'It becomes almost a drug you want to return to.'