issue #46: waves
There is a hidden side to Venice, which comes out especially in winter: silent, slow, nostalgic. We ask photographer Matteo de Mayda to tell us about it, through a selection of images and a postcard. Enjoy the exploration!
Welcome to Caleido, the diary about extraordinary people curated by MM Company / Read the Editor’s letter here.
1. If you were to write a Travelogue from Venice, what would its title be? What does this title mean to you?
“Lio, Clodia e Malamocco.”
I decided to start from the inlet furthest from home: Chioggia (Clodia). From Castello, I took a vaporetto (waterbus) that carried us to a bus, which was then loaded onto a larger ferry. This allowed us to travel along the 21-kilometer-long, 300-meter-wide strip of land leading to Chioggia, a journey that took two hours.
There, I found massive breakwaters taming the force of the waves and a fluorescent rust coating the rocks, left by time and storm surges. On one side of the Sottomarina jetty, you can see the salty waves of the Adriatic Sea; on the other side, the brackish, flat waters of the lagoon.
After sunset, we headed toward the Malamocco inlet, where we stopped for a sleepless night filled with too many mosquitoes. At dawn, I reached the Alberoni beach, on the opposite side of the inlet, where a film of algae covered the rocks as if to protect them, and cruise ships floated on a sea of grass until they reached Porto Marghera.
Retracing my steps, the last inlet was that of the Lido (Lio), which I reached by bike from Punta Sabbioni, crossing the seafront all the way to a roundabout for camper-equipped dervishes. It was still early for tourists on the beach, their absence replaced by a stretch of marine lugworms and the hundreds of patterns they left in the sand. Seeing the shuttle headed to the Il Muretto nightclub, I noticed how much more visually dull the young men in their shirts were compared to the girls, each accessorized in her unique way.
“Acqua in bocca” (literally “water in the mouth”) means drowning, secrecy, but for the lagoon, it is breath, it is voice. The three inlets are both access and exit, boundary and union, separation and meeting point. In that swirl of meaning and contradictions, we scattered my mother’s ashes a month ago, on the fortieth day after her passing, when, according to various cultures, the soul bids farewell to the earth. In many beliefs, the sky welcomes the departed; for us, it was the water.
A project commissioned by IUAV – University of Venice, for the book Waves.
2. If you were in Venice right now, to whom would you send a postcard? What message would you write?
I would write it to anyone who offers me a “butto” to reach my small boat. Butto is the word used to describe the act of giving someone a ride to their vessel when it is moored in a spot inaccessible by foot. It’s a form of solidarity among boats that I find symbolic of life on the waters of the lagoon.
3. Is there an object that reminds you of Venice? What is the memory associated with it? Can you send us a photo taken by you?
My small boat is called Campagne because, when I was new to navigating the lagoon, I made countless mistakes: I’d forget to pull up the fenders, ask inappropriate questions, and often hear people say, “Don’t act like a country bumpkin!” In short, I wanted to seem experienced and confident, but I was (and still am) a bumpkin from Treviso, doing my best in the lagoon. And for us country folk, when we see a car with a VE (Venice) license plate, we’re taught from a young age to say, “Go back to your boat!” So, I decided to name my little boat Campagne, just as the Venetians call us mainlanders.
