We changed our ways to read, our ways to interact and even our ways to travel. We were dealing already with the crowds and the phenomenal number of attractions so everything had to be fast and as hermetical as possible. Making fun of the groups of asian tourists living the experience behind their camera in the 90s, to become at the end, just like that; a very organised mob following what we believed to be our niche culture, being part, in fact of the huge consumerist tendency. The editors were telling us once, it is our role to inform and bring poetry, then influencers arrived and they saw nobody is reading anymore, they just want images and some key words. The treadmill was moving for us, the video billboards were informing placidly and the # became our fast searching and reading system.
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But in this world of image, photography died. The instant, the quickness took over the beauty and the meaning. Superficiality became the norm. Filters, effects, dynamism, retouch, forgive me, fast app retouch, they override the graphic designers and the photographers. Comunication at the hand of everybody, democratising the medias and that not for its best as it is at the hands of anybody… We can see printed campaigns with no knowledge of composition, we can hear the new icons talking with grammatical mistakes, the depth of communication went off like a helium balloon, somewhere, up in the skies.
The stillness of everything brought back this magic balloons, the knowhow, the refinement, the delicacy of a crafted object, the concept of beauty and with it the real communication. We took the books again in our hands and it felt good. We got bored of social media, and it gave us time. We projected different ways of interaction and realised what we valued was off point. Less has to become more. Exquisiteness will overcome the “must have” phenomenon, and rarity should be the new norm. We were wishing this to happen since quite a moment, and in isolated islands of wisdom we managed to get there. The stillness of everything brought back this magic balloons into the mids of more.
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Traveling is a key part of our development, both intellectual and emotional, it is bonding to other cultures and wave our existential net. But on the way we forgot it and young girls would go shopping in chain shops no matter where they found themselves, searching for the same experience they could have at home. The lack of curiosity brought us apart. Individualism developed and the sens of belonging diminished as we were covering more and more of the earth.
Weary of fast fashion, fast food, fast reading, fast travel, all fast society so much embraced, we look today for true experience. In the era when virtual and augmented reality will offer us the keys to everything, from a museum in Sydney or a concert in Tokyo to the moon , we are praising again reality. One of the first destinations people love to rediscover is Venice. Over populated by waves of careless tourists, abandoned by its population to be milked by tour-operators today it unveils her hidden beauty. Thomas Jonglez created some time ago a guide collection named “Secret … “ walking for years and with local writers and personalities from Venice to Dublin, offering hundreds of pages of sensitive and profound vision of this desired destinations.
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The attraction to fast handling and reading got to his edition house as well but it had to be in the same tactile and poetic way. Taking the best of both worlds Thomas Jonglez surrounded himself with refined personalities ready to capture the essence of a place in a condensed guide. And so, understatement became a precondition. “Soul of…” illustrates perfectly this information distill. Started with “Soul of Los Angeles” success was immediate and many followed, of course Venice. “Venice… Serenisima Venice. Drowning Venice. Venice the absolute romantic city. Venice invaded by tourists. All has been written about Venice. Positive or negative, every bit is true.”
This is how Servane Giol starts her journey capturing Venice’s perfume in just 121 pages. Instagram like, chapters follow as # and photography has the main role. Dreaded by the obvious question: another guide about Venice, Servane made sure to offer a paper instagram of an intimate choice. Destinations and experiences she did and suggested to others long before this project entered her life. She wished to offer a guide, like a whispering friend, easy to handle, easy to read, easy to follow, studded with brilliant interviews of venetian personalities. At the press conference, she challenged the local journalists to say if they have already done all of her 30 destinations, to proudly discover non of them did. Not to mention the 31st and last #, an enigma to discover on your own.
What better place and moment to find inspiration than Venice in lockdown. That moment of creation, that interlude resonated in the heart of the adopted venetian. Director of a theatre school company and mother of 4, Servane Giol lives there since more than 20 years. You can find her preferred places of Serenisima and its lagoon in libraries around the world, translated already in several languages, and of course, Amazon.
