Last Post from Venice

Last night I downloaded my images from the digital camera onto my Nixvue-lite 30gb portable hard drive, just like I do every night. Just for fun, I wanted to see how many images I had shot. But I couldn't find anything other than what I had just downloaded (I know what you digital geeks are thinking. Yes, I have programmed the camera to assign unique ID's to all images.) I fear that I have lost nearly all of my digital captures. I have no way to confirm this until I get home.

This only encourages my mistrust of this technology. I know exactly how many rolls of film I have shot (34), and I am confident that they will produce images, just as they have for the past 40 years of my photographic life. But digital--I have a lot to learn before I'm ready shoot a professional job on it.

But back to Venice. Today was museum day: the Accademia and the Modern. I liked the Modern more, but that's because I know that period of art. Not that the Accademia was not a thrill ride of its own--I marvelled at execution and impact, but without understanding a whit of context. Tintoretto--a proto El Greco, near as I could tell. Most of medieval art--the immediate antecedent to surrealism. In fact, Italy has always intimidated me as a travel destination because I know so little about Renaissance art. I felt I'd need to study for a year first.

Venice's Modern is a weird little museum. Their eclectic collection spans early 19th to mid 20th centuries, with a strong provincial bias. they had gobs of Italian painters I'd never heard of, but also a few French impressionists, some Spaniards, even an American, Mark Tobey. The curation was odd--gang all the paintings by age, never mind subject matter. It made for some odd juxtapositions, like this: three sexy, naked ones (Tito, "Birth of Venus," Bressani "Modesty and Vanity,"--I'll take Vanity, she looks like more fun--and Laurenti, "New Flowering," a take on the Three Graces) next to Marc Chagall's "The Rabbi of Vitebsk." Head spinning.

I have passed that sad milestone of a trip: my last washing of underwear and socks. It means my spares will see me home in two days.