During my last visit to Venice I went out at dawn one morning to photograph the Grand Canal. As the first gleams of the rising sun illuminated the Ponte dell’Academia, I was amazed to find that a crowd of photographers had already set up tripods and cameras pointing towards the silhouette of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Salute.

I took a shot of the photographers crowded together on the bridge, turned around and disappeared into a narrow street. What was my intention the previous evening when I decided on that dawn visit to the Grand Canal? Was I thinking of Turner’s oil sketches? Was it an unconscious desire to see the architecture of Venice as John Ruskin had seen it in the 19th century? Probably.

After a thirty-year hiatus, my return to photography raised many doubts and required a number of adjustments in the face of the changes that have occurred during my absence from the photographic scene.
Five years ago I took up digital photography and have not as yet had the curiosity to explore the possibilities offered by the internet and the digital image beyond traditional practice. I take photographs using a camera with lenses and I seem to focus more and more on the vegetal and mineral realms.
I am often stimulated by scenes of daily life which, forty years ago, were my favourite subjects. Today, the urgency is in the transmission of an attitude of reverence towards life and in the re-enchantment of the world.
An isolated photograph of a sunrise in Venice would not be part of such a mission. It was a precious lesson to learn, that particular morning by the Grand Canal. And it is with great relief that I discern the beginning of a path out of the maze created by the Information Age and the photographic upheaval of digital technology.

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