"Late Afternoon, Venice"

duogravure from original gum print, mounted on japanese tissue paper

Edward Steichen's photograph Late Afternoon, Venice (also known as Venice) shows Venice in misty light, softly tinted and bathed in delicate shades of gray. The photograph was taken between 1905 and 1911 and was first published in the double issue XLII–XLIII (43–44) of the magazine Camera Work, edited by Alfred Stieglitz, on April 1, 1913. This image was reproduced as a duogravure from the original gum print. It is an image produced by double printing using the intaglio process to add a slight tint. The image was published again in the next issue, XLIV (44), on October 1, but this time as a heliogravure from the original negative.
The image is an exemplary work of pictorialist photography, which had reached its peak in this phase of Steichen's work. The scene shows a Venetian canal with a typical gondola and two gondoliers in front of a row of houses in the haze of late afternoon. The high horizon and the water with its reflections, which are thus dominantly placed in the image, create a strong emphasis on the effect of light and mood. It is not a documentary image, but a photographic poem that oscillates between perception and memory.
In an accompanying theoretical text, artist and theorist Marius de Zayas expressly praised Steichen's photography: “In his photographs he has succeeded in expressing the perfect fusion of the subject and the object. He has carried to its highest point the expression of a system of representation: the realistic one."¹
This perfect fusion of subject and object is precisely what can be observed in Late Afternoon, Venice: a photograph that not only shows, but also feels. In the blurred line between water and sky, in the quiet drama of the light, a new visual language manifests itself, characterized by symbolism, painting, and a modern sensitivity to atmosphere.
(Christoph Fuchs)

Notes

1
Marius de Zayas, “Photography and Artistic Photography,” in Camera Work, no. XLII–XLIII, April 1, 1913, p. 14.

All issues of Camera Work are available in high resolution in the Modernist Journals Project.