The fashion of photographing oneself nude in Venice

If in Pisa the ritual photograph is the one in which one poses in perspective pretending to hold up the tower, in Venice there is another fashion, less widespread but still alive and present: that of being portrayed near some striking view (a bridge, a canal, a recognizable monument)... without even a dress on. Last week, during the April 25 bridge, the news of the model who posed nude on a balcony for a photo shoot caused a stir and bounced all over social media: for her, as the newspaper La Nuova Venezia reported, a 750-euro fine and an urban banishment for showing herself nude in a public place. Sanction also for the photographer who was accompanying her, in her case because he was using, without permission, public spaces to organize his set: in fact, for operations such as these it would be necessary to ask the municipality for authorization, which is usually granted for a fee (of course: the municipality would never have authorized nude scenes such as those that the photographer was filming).

The case provoked many reactions, often indignant: of course it is possible that a naked woman in front of dozens of people, as in this case (in fact, the police traced it back to her thanks to the many videos of passersby circulated on social media), might offend someone’s sensibilities, but otherwise why look with disdain at a model who wants to have her nude portrait taken in a city alley? Indeed, that of the model on the balcony is not an isolated case, despite the fact that it has provoked many reactions. Far from it: Venice is a favorite destination for models, both professional and improvised, who want to be photographed nude in public. In fact, by searching the web it is possible to find dozens of unequivocal photographs that tell of a rather widespread, long-lasting habit that exclusively concerns women (very hard to find images of models posing nude), and that in Venice takes on dimensions with which no other city in the world can compete. Try doing the same search for Rome, Florence, Paris, London: none can hold a candle to Venice.

But why exactly is the lagoon capital the scene of so many daring photo shoots ? Probably because in Venice you can find a mix that does not exist in any other major tourist city, and that makes the Venetian city particularly suitable for sets of this kind: meanwhile, the severe depopulation of the historic center (from almost 80 thousand in 1991 to just under 50 thousand recorded last summer: 30 thousand inhabitants who have left the city in just 30 years) means that there are many areas of the city where it is difficult to cross paths with anyone, even when the tourist season is at its peak. In certain alleys, one does not even need to wait until nightfall to have complete tranquility and thus have plenty of time to be photographed naked without the slightest disturbance. Secondly, the fact that Venice is recognizable everywhere: in Rome it might not be so easy to take a nude photo in front of the Colosseum, while it might be so late at night in an alley of the Monti district, but how many people in the world would immediately recognize a Roman glimpse? The same goes for Florence, for Paris, for so many cities: either you take a picture of yourself in front of one of the main monuments, or you run the risk of not making it immediately clear where you are. In Venice, on the other hand, all it takes is a canal or a bridge to immediately identify the city. Also not to be underestimated is the mysterious charm of Venice, where in ancient times people routinely went around in masks even outside the carnival period, a fact that makes it more intriguing to photograph yourself nude (many models in fact wear masks). Last but not least, the memory of the great festivals of the Serenissima made famous by the cinematic imagination that has given us an idea of 18th-century Venice as a theater of orgies and revelry, and the erotic adventures of Giacomo Casanova make Venice the perfect city for photos without veils.

Here, then, is a roundup of women and girls who have photographed themselves nude in Venice. They range from professional shoots (including one for the famous Playboy magazine starring Roman playmate Chiara Arrighi) to amateur shots, from images by great photographers (among whom it is worth mentioning Helmut Newton) to those by good professionals to the tourist with a smartphone, from refined black-and-white photographs to more explicit shots that border on the pornographic. An interesting phenomenon of. costume (although here the thing you see the least is precisely the clothes) that makes Venice an even more rare and peculiar city.

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The fashion of photographing oneself nude in Venice

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