Venice, the floating city built on water, has enchanted artists for centuries with its crumbling facades, labyrinthine passageways, and rippling reflections. Its romance, visual opulence, and distinctive character have made it one of the most photographed cities in the world. Yet in a sea of saturated postcards and digital reproductions, one artist has managed to carve a quiet, haunting space that turns the conventional imagery of Venice on its head. Giacomo Brunelli, the Italian visual storyteller known for his atmospheric work with 35mm film, has approached the city with an unconventional sensitivity in his self-published photo book, simply titled Venice.
Born in Perugia in 1977, Brunelli has built a reputation on transforming urban life into visual poems that lean toward the cinematic. With Venice, he doesn’t merely document the city—he reframes it. Infusing shadow, movement, and a delicate sense of absence, he gives Venice a moodiness that sets it apart from the usual bright gondolas and crowded piazzas. This immersive body of work offers a strikingly different interpretation of a city that is often reduced to visual clichés. Through this interview, Brunelli reveals the influences, challenges, and emotional terrain behind the lens of his latest photographic voyage.
Why the Floating City Beckoned Again
Venice is not merely a place; it is a myth incarnate. Its surreal geography, suspended between water and sky, defies logic and invites fascination. For Giacomo Brunelli, the city did not present itself as just another destination but as an enduring echo from his formative years. His first encounter with Venice occurred during childhood—a time when sensory impressions sink deepest. The whisper of lapping tides against stone, the spectral silence of fog, the labyrinthine streets that seemed to spiral inward—all left a lingering imprint.
Years later, in early adulthood, he returned not as a tourist but as a seeker. Carrying his camera, he began to view the city through a more inquisitive lens. That visit resulted in images that eventually contributed to his early published work The Animals (2008), but even then, Venice felt too vast, too mythic to capture fully. It simmered quietly in his artistic consciousness.
His recent journey to Venice, however, was not an exercise in nostalgia. It was an intentional effort to confront the city once more—but with a changed gaze and deeper patience. Rather than replicate images already etched into cultural memory, he aimed to reveal the invisible strata beneath Venice’s polished surface. He wasn’t interested in the grand piazzas or the gondoliers bathed in golden hour light. Instead, he searched for what lies in between: the corners where memory clings and silence accumulates. Venice, for Brunelli, became less a subject and more a mirror—reflecting not only architectural grandeur but inner mood.
This time, his ambition was to compose a visual requiem for a city too often trapped by its own legend. His lens sought the unseen.
Turning Away from the Cliché
Venice may be one of the most photographed cities on Earth, yet few manage to capture its elusive spirit. Brunelli’s deliberate avoidance of visual stereotypes sets his work apart in a saturated cultural landscape. While many are drawn to its floating elegance and decorative architecture, his vision gravitates toward the margins—the forgotten alleyways, the stagnant canals, and the transient gestures that vanish before they can be defined.
The artist’s process is shaped by subtraction rather than addition. He does not embellish; he distills. His images avoid spectacle and instead suggest quiet narratives through careful framing. Often shooting in near silence, he allows the environment to dictate the story. In his hands, Venetian architecture becomes more than historical ornamentation—it becomes a compositional device, a character that shapes space and mood. The interplay between shadow and structure guides the viewer’s eye with uncanny restraint.
By fixating on narrow perspectives and cloaked passageways, Brunelli subverts the popular notion of Venice as a luminous dreamscape. His images don’t celebrate the city’s flamboyant façade but rather hint at its psychological undercurrent. Each frame becomes a whisper of something lost—time, memory, presence—never fully grasped but always sensed.
It’s a visual language that doesn’t rely on clarity but thrives in ambiguity. He invites the viewer into the city’s forgotten chambers, not as a guide, but as a fellow drifter seeking answers to questions no one dares ask aloud.
Light, Reflection, and the Texture of Atmosphere
What distinguishes Venice from other artistic interpretations is Brunelli’s subtle manipulation of light—not in grandeur but in nuance. He uses illumination sparingly, often capturing moments just before sunrise or after dusk. These liminal periods, when the city blurs into its own reflection, become fertile ground for visual storytelling.
Rather than striving for photographic sharpness, Brunelli embraces obscurity. The fog that clings to canal waters, the streak of light slipping across a damp brick wall, the silhouette of a lone passerby half-consumed by shadow—all contribute to a dreamlike ambiance. These aren’t decorative effects but emotional signals, revealing the city’s quieter, more melancholic self.
Reflection, both literal and metaphorical, plays a critical role. In Venice, water becomes a secondary canvas, distorting what it mirrors. Brunelli uses this phenomenon not just for composition, but to evoke duality. Each image seems to carry two truths—what is seen and what is implied. These reflections, subtly manipulated through angle and timing, heighten the city’s theatrical quality without leaning into exaggeration.
Atmosphere is paramount in his vision. Each photograph feels dense with unspoken history. The dampness of walls, the curve of ancient cornices, the emptiness of a normally bustling thoroughfare—all coalesce into a visual meditation on impermanence.
Process Rooted in Ritual and Restraint
In an era obsessed with immediacy, Giacomo Brunelli’s decision to continue working with 35mm film is not simply a stylistic nod to the past—it is a declaration of intent. Shooting analog requires deliberation. Each frame demands thought, each decision carries consequence. Unlike digital formats, where thousands of images can be taken in a day, film mandates discipline. And it is within that discipline that Brunelli thrives.
He also remains devoted to the darkroom, where he prints his own images. This manual process allows him to preserve a tangible connection to his work. From the mechanical click of the shutter to the tactile handling of negatives, each phase is a ritual. This hands-on methodology enables a deeper intimacy with the material, imbuing every image with a sense of authorship that transcends the visual.
Venice, with its delicate tones and textural richness, lends itself beautifully to film. The unpredictable grain, the softness of light, the occasional imperfection—all serve to echo the city’s own fragility. In combining analog techniques with a deeply intuitive eye, Brunelli ensures that each photograph not only documents, but breathes.
Silence as Subject: The Impact of Global Quietude
Timing played a crucial, if unintended, role in the creation of Venice. Brunelli’s principal visits occurred just before the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped global travel and public life. As Europe fell silent under quarantine, cities once bustling with movement and sound turned spectral.
Venice, a city long burdened by overtourism, found itself momentarily hushed. For Brunelli, this silence was not emptiness, but opportunity. It allowed him to encounter the city in a more primal state—closer, perhaps, to what it once was. The absence of crowds stripped away layers of distraction and exposed something raw, something profoundly human.
This unexpected stillness lingers in the images. There’s a temporal dissonance at play, as if each photograph captures not a single moment but a suspended echo. Figures drift like ghosts. Empty spaces pulse with latent energy. Venice, devoid of its usual noise, becomes a sanctuary for reflection.
Rather than insert commentary on the pandemic directly, Brunelli lets the atmosphere speak. The result is an elegy, not for loss, but for rediscovery—of solitude, of patience, of presence.
From Frame to Artifact: The Power of Self-Publishing
With Venice, Brunelli took full creative control of the publishing process. After collaborating with various established houses for previous books, he felt the need to craft something entirely personal—from cover design and typography to paper selection and print execution. The decision to self-publish was not born of rebellion, but from a desire for cohesion. It was a chance to ensure that the physical object mirrored the vision behind the photographs.
This hands-on involvement extended to overseeing the printing process, where his expertise in tonal balance and paper response helped realize the subtle contrasts essential to his aesthetic. The result is not just a book but a curated experience—an artifact that aligns in material and mood with the images it houses.
By sidestepping commercial compromise, Brunelli preserved the soul of the project. The book itself becomes a vessel of intent, its form echoing the textures and tones that fill its pages.
Memory, Mood, and the Cities Yet to Come
Though Venice marks a culmination of sorts, Brunelli views it as part of an ongoing journey. Having already captured the atmospheric layers of London and the fragmented pace of New York, he looks ahead to cities such as Tokyo, Mumbai, and Buenos Aires—places with rich visual lexicons and cultural layers to unearth.
His tools will remain the same: his trusted 35mm camera and a single 50mm lens. For him, creativity flourishes within limitations. By maintaining consistent equipment, he allows each location to shape its own visual narrative organically, without the intrusion of evolving gear or technological gimmicks.
But even as his destinations expand, his core intent remains rooted in emotion and restraint. Brunelli is not seeking to document; he is searching for resonance—for that invisible chord that links city, memory, and individual perception.
Shadows, Silhouettes, and the Echo of Film Noir
In the moody silence of Venice’s twilight hours, Giacomo Brunelli finds the perfect stage for his evolving visual narrative. Often associated with a cinematic aesthetic steeped in tension and mystery, Brunelli’s work has drawn comparisons to the visual traditions of film noir. This association is not just stylistic—it is structural. His images evoke unease, introspection, and ambiguity, transforming Venice from an open-air museum into a living shadow theater.
His visual interpretations unfold as half-seen encounters, where subjects are reduced to outlines and gestures. The result is an enigmatic visual lexicon—one that suggests more than it shows. The layered darkness, diffused lighting, and rich black tones lend each image a velvety depth, resisting the bright romanticism usually attributed to the city. Venice’s natural glow is dimmed purposefully. Brunelli prefers the liminal moments—the blue hours, the overcast days, the reflections that dissolve rather than define.
In these works, shadows become agents of storytelling. Alleyways vanish into murk. Faces are obscured or fragmented. These are not photographs that ask for admiration; they demand immersion. The chiaroscuro he employs isn’t just a visual effect—it’s an ethos. Light and darkness wrestle in each frame, mirroring the internal contrasts of memory, place, and perception.
By eschewing overt narrative, Brunelli invites viewers into a dreamlike terrain. The imagery is suggestive, atmospheric, and open-ended. It’s as if every photograph is an abandoned fragment from an unseen film—frozen, but still emotionally kinetic.
The Ritual of Film and the Discipline of Intention
In a digital era fueled by speed and convenience, Giacomo Brunelli’s unwavering dedication to 35mm film places him in a rarefied space. His choice is not rooted in nostalgia but in intention. Film imposes a rhythm of working that aligns with his sensibilities: deliberate, contemplative, and restrained. Each frame demands presence. Each exposure is irreversible. This constraint births a unique kind of creative clarity.
More than a medium, analog film serves as a philosophical structure. The materiality of film requires the photographer to relinquish total control. Unlike digital sensors that instantly display results, film demands trust—both in the process and in one’s vision. Mistakes are possible, even inevitable. But it’s within this fragility that Brunelli finds strength. Errors can’t be deleted, only absorbed. They become part of the work’s organic evolution.
The connection deepens in the darkroom, where Brunelli handcrafts each print. It is here, under the amber glow of safelights, that image becomes object. Handling negatives, mixing chemicals, adjusting exposure times—these tasks aren’t technical chores; they are rites of passage. Every photograph is not only taken but earned. The tactile, slow-burning intimacy of this process forges a deeper bond between creator and creation.
Analog Venice: A City Made for Film
Venice, with its baroque decay and perpetually shifting light, seems custom-built for analog interpretation. The city resists clarity. Its surfaces are cracked and corroded. Its reflections are unreliable. Its beauty is fractured—charming and uncanny in equal measure. Brunelli’s use of 35mm film becomes an extension of the city’s own material character. The two—artist and environment—intertwine in visual symbiosis.
The grain structure of film mirrors the texture of weather-worn stone. Light leaks and vignettes mimic the fading grandeur of forgotten palazzos. Shadows on water ripple like emulsions. The imperfections native to analog tools echo the architectural irregularities of Venice itself.
This analog vocabulary lends Brunelli’s Venice a quiet timelessness. It unmoors the images from the present. They could have been taken yesterday or decades ago. The city’s essence—unfixed, hovering between memory and myth—is rendered more authentically through film’s unpredictable subtleties. Each photograph functions as a portal, revealing not just a view but a sensation, a temperature, a whisper of something that once was.
Composition as Character: Constructing Intimacy Through Frame
Brunelli’s framing choices are unorthodox, often eschewing traditional compositional rules in favor of emotional instinct. His images rarely center subjects in classical poses. Instead, they emerge from oblique angles, partial views, and truncated figures. Windows become mirrors, arches become thresholds, and streets seem to fold in upon themselves. The visual architecture of Venice is inward-looking—compact, constricted, and introspective.
He sees the camera not just as an observational tool but as a sculptural device, shaping the visible into something malleable and metaphorical. His recurring use of silhouettes creates ambiguity, allowing viewers to project themselves into the scene. The anonymity of figures—blurred, shadowed, cropped—liberates the narrative from specificity.
In this visual language, architecture is not background; it is an active presence. The ornate decay of facades, the tight symmetry of windows, and the glistening curves of bridges operate like characters in a story with no spoken lines. Brunelli manipulates depth, light falloff, and negative space to create scenes that feel more like recollections than records.
His frames are intimate, but never invasive. They suggest proximity while maintaining emotional distance. This paradox—of being close yet removed—creates a haunting tension throughout the book.
A City’s Stillness in a Global Pause
Unbeknownst to him, Brunelli’s initial travels for the Venice project coincided with the world’s descent into an unprecedented hush. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 emptied cities and disrupted rhythms. For Venice—a city long overwhelmed by tourism—the silence was transformative.
When Brunelli returned from his early 2020 shoot with illness and a sense of foreboding, he had already captured a version of the city most will never see again. The absence of crowds gave the space a rawness, a vulnerability. It was as if the city had exhaled for the first time in years.
The stillness that pervades the images is not only environmental but emotional. There is a meditative slowness to the compositions, a sense that time itself has softened. Empty piazzas stretch wider. Doorways gape darker. The usual hustle is replaced by whispers of stillness.
This mood, whether intentional or circumstantial, offers a rare perspective. In Brunelli’s Venice, the city is stripped of spectacle, left alone with its own echoes. The photographs become relics of a suspended moment—a global pause captured in one of the world’s most transient places.
Publishing as Artistic Autonomy
With the creation of Venice, Brunelli made a pivotal choice—to self-publish. In doing so, he stepped outside the conventional structures of art book publishing and into the domain of total creative control. This move was not driven by rebellion, but by a desire for purity. Every element of the book—from its layout and typography to the texture of the paper and style of binding—was carefully selected to echo the atmosphere of the work.
This autonomy allowed him to maintain the integrity of his visual voice. There were no editorial compromises, no external constraints on format or sequence. The book was shaped as a sculptural object, each element contributing to the experience of the viewer. As someone deeply embedded in print culture, Brunelli was involved in every aspect of production, often working directly with printers to achieve precise tonal ranges.
The result is a publication that does more than display images—it immerses the reader in Brunelli’s personal vision of Venice. The tactile nature of the materials, the weight of the cover, the paper’s grain—all mirror the qualities of the city itself. This alignment between content and form reinforces the emotional gravity of the work.
Beyond the Frame: What Remains and What Lies Ahead
Though Venice presents itself as a singular project, it also points toward Brunelli’s evolving artistic trajectory. His desire to explore cities like Tokyo, Mumbai, and Buenos Aires suggests a growing curiosity toward places layered in contradiction—urban landscapes where tradition meets volatility, where ancient textures meet rapid transformation.
But regardless of where he travels, his method remains the same: analog film, a single lens, a solitary pursuit. There’s something almost monastic in this approach. It’s less about conquest than communion. Less about spectacle than resonance.
Brunelli’s images linger in the mind not because they dazzle, but because they echo. They are not windows, but mirrors—reflecting our own uncertainties, our own quiet longings. In a world rushing toward clarity and speed, his work offers something far more precious: ambiguity and stillness.
His Venice reminds us that beauty lives not in what is obvious, but in what is obscured. And in that darkness, something essential waits to be seen.
A Pandemic’s Silent Influence
As global history pivoted in early 2020, so too did the trajectory of artistic expression across Europe. For Giacomo Brunelli, the timing of his Venetian exploration became inextricably linked to the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. What began as a personal and creative retreat into the atmospheric corners of Venice suddenly took on new meaning, shaped by lockdowns, border restrictions, and the stillness that blanketed the continent.
Brunelli arrived in Venice in January 2020, a time when the city still bustled with its usual din of footfall and flowing conversation. Yet by mid-February, after returning to London with a high fever that he now suspects was an early infection, the world changed. Travel shut down, streets emptied, and normal life evaporated into a strange and solemn pause. For Venice, a city often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of its visitors, this sudden quiet was surreal. Its soundscape, once filled with the shouts of tourists and the hum of vaporettos, fell into a spectral calm.
Rather than hinder Brunelli’s vision, the emptiness of the city became its own kind of subject. This once-crowded wonder, now nearly devoid of human presence, offered rare access to its deeper essence. His images from this period capture more than absence—they reveal Venice in a moment of existential breath. The stillness is not vacancy but presence: the echo of water lapping against centuries-old foundations, the soft scuff of footsteps in alleys that now seem sacred.
The atmosphere in his photographs is palpably altered. Light appears thicker, slower; shadows stretch longer; reflections blur more dreamily on undisturbed canals. It’s a Venice not flattened by time but enriched by stillness—a relic, yes, but a breathing one. Brunelli’s lens did not document an empty city; it uncovered a city returned to itself.
Unseen Rhythms: A City Rediscovered
One of the paradoxes of Venice is that its most extraordinary moments are often drowned out by the noise of the expected. Mass tourism, constant movement, and curated views reduce the city's nuance to spectacle. But in the forced absence of crowds, Venice began to reveal subtler rhythms, and it was this rediscovered cadence that Brunelli found most compelling.
Without throngs of visitors blocking bridges and lining the piazzas, Brunelli was able to focus on micro-gestures—the sway of a curtain in a breeze, the gentle closing of a door, the glow of a single lantern against a palazzo wall. In this reclaimed silence, Venice whispered instead of shouted. Its mysteries didn’t vanish—they deepened.
The removal of distraction sharpened Brunelli’s attention. Spaces previously overlooked became central. Time, no longer punctuated by performance, became fluid. This change in tempo infused his compositions with a quiet reverence. By exploring Venice without the noise of external interpretation, he gave space to its natural poetry—melancholic, intricate, and ineffably dignified.
Altered Perspectives: Rethinking Composition in Confinement
The conditions of pandemic-era Venice did not only affect Brunelli’s access; they changed the way he saw. Limitations became possibilities. With fewer people to observe, fewer moving elements to compose around, he turned his gaze toward architectural intimacy, spatial nuance, and emotional tonality. As the city's pace slowed, so too did his approach to framing and execution.
It was during this period that he began experimenting more radically with his technique. Historically, Brunelli had relied on waist-level composition—a method that allowed him to remain subtle, even invisible, as he moved through crowds. But in a city now emptied of its usual flow, this covert posture was no longer necessary or even appropriate. Instead, he adopted a fixed-viewfinder camera that required eye-level engagement. This simple adjustment marked a profound shift in his methodology.
Composing at eye level altered his physical relationship to space. He was no longer observing from below but encountering the city more directly. Angles became more assertive. The balance between light and shadow took on new complexity. The change in perspective brought him closer—not only to his subjects, but to the very essence of place.
From Reaction to Reinvention: Experimenting with Process
This reevaluation of perspective also served as a catalyst for broader experimentation. With fewer visual distractions and a less chaotic environment, Brunelli felt liberated to break from his previously refined aesthetic. He relinquished certain technical certainties, challenging his own established visual codes. Rather than refining a signature style, he allowed unpredictability to guide his process.
Mechanical constraints also became part of this artistic recalibration. He chose to work with a secondary camera—one with a fixed viewfinder rather than the removable waist-level unit he typically favored. This physical imposition forced him to reconstruct his interaction with the environment. Instead of passively observing, he engaged more consciously with his surroundings, allowing spontaneous discoveries to reshape his intentions.
These adjustments weren’t simply tactical—they were transformative. They pushed Brunelli to consider the emotional language of his work. Without relying on the motifs and methods that had defined his earlier series, he began to ask new questions. How could space become a feeling? How might shadow evoke memory? How does stillness convey narrative? In exploring these questions, his work transcended visual documentation and approached a kind of sensory translation.
A Dialogue Between Solitude and Structure
Venice, always a city of dualities, became an arena for Brunelli to explore deeper dialogues—between presence and absence, intimacy and distance, light and enclosure. With fewer people populating his frames, architectural forms began to take on greater narrative weight. Doorways implied secrets. Windows hinted at unseen lives. Empty steps felt recently departed.
His compositions began to read like visual poems—dense with atmosphere, steeped in longing. He captured the soul of buildings, the echo of footsteps never seen, the liminality of fog rising just after rain. The material culture of Venice—stone, iron, wood, and water—emerged not as backdrop, but as character. The city itself was performing, and Brunelli responded as both witness and collaborator.
In many frames, human figures are rendered spectral—shadowy forms lost in motion or arrested at the threshold of identification. These presences are not central, but they haunt the margins, infusing the cityscape with narrative tension. Their vagueness invites viewers to project their own stories onto the scene. The result is an emotive geography where nothing is declared, yet everything is felt.
Echoes of the Eternal: Timelessness Through Isolation
What defines Venice as a body of work is not its portrayal of a specific moment, but its invocation of timelessness. The pandemic may have precipitated the silence, but the images transcend that context. They do not scream “2020”—they whisper of centuries. The atmosphere, aesthetic choices, and subject matter reflect a city not frozen in time, but suspended in it.
The imperfections of analog film—grain, blur, uneven light—mirror the organic decay of the city itself. Vignettes feel aged even when new. These qualities lend the images a patina of permanence, reinforcing the sensation that what we are seeing is not merely a record of place, but a relic of human perception.
Even the architectural motifs feel timeless: Gothic arches that recall medieval ritual, iron-wrought balconies that echo baroque whispers, alleyways that could lead to any century. Through Brunelli’s lens, Venice becomes not just a location but a vessel of historical memory. Its streets no longer tethered to tourism, its waters no longer reflecting a curated image—they are returned to the elemental.
Towards New Horizons: What Silence Taught
In reflecting on his work in Venice during this extraordinary time, Brunelli has spoken of an emotional and creative realignment. The forced limitations of the pandemic offered him a chance to see differently—not only in terms of method, but in intention. The silence imposed by circumstance revealed to him the vast expressive power of reduction.
Looking ahead, this experience will no doubt echo through future projects. The lessons learned—the value of limitation, the potency of space, the resonance of stillness—have permanently influenced his artistic ethos. Whether exploring dense urban environments or remote, forgotten towns, Brunelli’s work will continue to bear the imprint of this Venetian interlude.
In many ways, Venice stands not just as a visual record of a city during a unique historical pause, but as a meditation on what remains when the world retreats. It is an elegy not for what was lost, but for what was finally allowed to be seen.
Crafting a Book With Complete Creative Control
While Venice stands as a significant artistic achievement, it also marks a turning point in Brunelli’s publishing journey. After releasing books through established publishers, he chose to self-publish this project. This decision was driven by a desire for autonomy—from choosing paper textures and cover materials to overseeing the printing process itself.
As someone deeply involved in the production of his own prints, Brunelli found the act of building a book from the ground up incredibly rewarding. It allowed him to shape every detail according to his vision, ensuring that the final product was not just a container for his work, but an extension of it. The result is a tactile, cohesive object that resonates with the same emotional tonality as the images inside.
Future Explorations on the Horizon
Having turned his gaze on cities like London, New York, and now Venice, Brunelli’s future remains wide open. When asked about upcoming ambitions, he speaks of countries and continents rich in complexity—India, Japan, and South America—all calling out to be explored through his intimate, analog lens. These regions promise contrasting visual languages, and Brunelli is eager to see how his style adapts and evolves.
Importantly, he has no plans to change his tools. He remains loyal to his 35mm cameras and 50mm lens, not out of nostalgia, but out of conviction. For him, constraints are liberating. They sharpen focus, deepen attention, and preserve the ritual of seeing.
Rediscovering Venice in the Shadows
Ultimately, Giacomo Brunelli’s Venice is not a travelogue or homage—it’s a meditation. A reflection on how memory, place, and emotion intersect. He doesn’t try to freeze the city in time but lets it breathe in layers—some visible, others only hinted at. His images don’t shout; they whisper. And in those whispers, we find a Venice that is startlingly fresh.
This is not the Venice of crowds or clichés. It is a city of introspection, of quiet gestures and fleeting silhouettes. Through Brunelli’s vision, even the most iconic of cities becomes unfamiliar again—haunting, elusive, and utterly captivating.
Final Reflections:
Giacomo Brunelli’s Venice is a masterclass in quiet transformation—a visual dialogue between the artist’s inner world and the soul of one of the most storied cities on earth. In an age dominated by instant imagery and visual oversaturation, his commitment to analog craftsmanship and deliberate composition feels almost radical. Rather than capturing Venice in its typical postcard glow, he reveals its introspective underbelly—a city defined by light’s absence as much as its presence.
What sets this work apart is not only its aesthetic—marked by shadowplay, grain, and unexpected framing—but its emotional depth. Brunelli’s Venice feels lived-in yet untouchable, both familiar and eerily remote. The absence of human faces and the frequent use of silhouettes strip the narrative of identity and place it into the realm of archetype and dream. He invites the viewer to inhabit these scenes, not as tourists, but as unseen observers moving through a city half-forgotten by time.
This body of work also stands as a quiet resistance to the prevailing speed and disposability of modern visual culture. Shooting on 35mm film, printing in the darkroom, and self-publishing the final book are choices rooted in slowness and intimacy. They allow the artist to remain fully present at every step of the journey, from capturing the image to holding the finished book in hand. In that sense, Venice is not just a photographic project—it’s a meditation on process, on vulnerability, and on the fragility of beauty.
Moreover, Venice arrives at a time when the city itself is undergoing profound change, grappling with the pressures of tourism, climate threats, and cultural erosion. Brunelli’s work doesn’t document these changes directly, but it acknowledges them through atmosphere—through the vacant alleyways, the reflective silence, the absence that hangs in the mist. There’s a melancholic undercurrent, but it never tips into despair. Instead, it offers a quiet reverence for what endures, and a gentle reminder that even in the most familiar places, there are still stories waiting to be seen differently.
In Venice, Brunelli not only reinvents a city—he reaffirms the enduring power of seeing with intention. His images ask us to slow down, look deeper, and remember that mystery often resides just beyond the edges of the known.
