Behind the Shot
Developer Abbot Kinney had a vision for Venice, California: to create a beach resort that paid homage to its Italian namesake with canals, pedestrian bridges and a colonnaded business district patterned after the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. Today only a few of these distinct colonnades remain on Windward Avenue; Claudio Santini captured this one in 2022 with its classic columns and arches.
“There are two shots in this image: the building and the woman with the turban,” he says. “I arranged them in a digital collage to evoke the feeling of Venice and that iconic part of town.”
Known today as a quirky beach town with a boardwalk brimming with entertainment, Venice is a natural stage under the open sky where all kinds of people are spontaneously part of the setting: surfers, bikers, artists, creatives, free spirits. “This image is a fragment of that unique setting,” Claudio says. “This is an art abstraction of a Venice icon.”
He investigates his subject matter through a meditative approach and reduces form and color into figurative minimalism. “In a photograph, the visual information is excessive,” he says. “I need to reduce the photographic forms to the essential lines of a drawing on which color will then be applied with the mechanical means of printing.”
This print will add a contemplative touch to any wall it hangs on.