Second Drift
The second drift on Giudecca island is on Friday 29 July 2022.
I reach the island from a different lagoon port, that of Punta Sabbioni.
I leave at 6:30 am and arrive in Giudecca at 7:20 am.
I start the drift from the same place as the first, in Sacca Fisola.
The equipment this time is different: as I had planned, I have a medium format camera with focal lengths from 36 to 128 mm (f.f. eq) and a bridge camera with a one-inch sensor and focal lengths from 24 to 600 mm (f.f. eq).
I have almost always planned to use the medium format camera, but I immediately realize that people notice me: not everyone likes my presence, in a place that the inhabitants consider not worth photographing.
An old lady looks at me and says ".... this gentleman will also come to take pictures in our homes ....".
Luckily, this is the only social interaction I did not feel comfortable with.
During the day I have several opportunities, never prompted by me, to interact with other people.
I spend half an hour with a gentleman who begins by asking me if I would buy his (film) camera: he insists on making me see/evaluate it and we say goodbye with my advice to rely on his daughter to sell the camera on eBay.
Around lunchtime, the owner of a restaurant remembers me near his home early in the morning and asks me why I am so deeply interested in an island that does not have many tourist attractions. Being a bit complicated to explain what a drift is on the spot, he is pleased to realize that not all people with cameras are tourists and that there are contents and meanings in urban realities that he would not consider significant.
In the afternoon I wander around the "Zitelle" neighbourhood and am amazed at the neighbourhood's contiguity with the Giudecca women's prison.
It is the first time that I see a prison totally inserted into the urban context, without any separation with people and houses.
Under one of the prison control towers, I meet a group of kids playing soccer on the nearby parish field. One of them insists that I take pictures of him and then accompanies me along the prison wall, where poster photos of young people from the neighbourhood are pasted. Seeing this contrast between a place of punishment and the images of young people full of life and oriented towards the future gives me a strong stimulus: I think that the parish priest wanted this initiative expressly to determine this "ley line" between the neighbourhood of free daily life, of work, of faith, of hope in the future and, on the other side of the wall, the place of punishment, of repentance, of the longed-for freedom, of despair.
This situation makes me reflect on the fact that, very often, on the lines of opposition between the nature of buildings, people and locations, "assertive" ley lines arise which are easier to perceive.
I believe that, in this case, my act of recognizing (and accepting) such an explicit ley line was an equally explicit psychogeographic act.
Giudecca in Black & White
