Venice’s time warp: The visual metamorphosis of a floating city

The author shows how photographs can render the passage of time. The essay looks at the Visual Metamorphosis of Venice. The photobooks discussed provide insight into the poetry and lyricism of one of the most photographed cities in the world, while also capturing the enigmatically blurred landscapes and disorientating close-ups that identify the destruction of its physical heritage. Taken as a whole, this essay focuses on the photobook as a form of urban narrative: a tool that has been variously deployed to read, analyse and interpret Venice through curated sequences of images, often in conjunction with literary or critical texts.