Venetian Laundry

[Søren Harbel - Venetian laundry I]

It is a well known fact: Every photographer loves a great laundry shot. The play of light and shadow. Unusual shapes. Whether in colour, or black + white. It is near impossible to make photographs of Venice that have not already been done. I have about 2000 negatives of Venice spanning near 40 years. Some of these have laundry in them. In fact, a lot of laundry has been eternalised on my negatives.

[Søren Harbel - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday]

[Søren Harbel - Venetian laundry II]

The laundry in most of my photographs has probably been discarded long ago through simple wear and age. Some of these photographs are quite old. However, there is a certain nostalgia when it comes to laundry and how we deal with it. From hand-washing through the first washing machines, and eventually the dryers that stole so many photographs from those of us into laundry!

[Søren Harbel - Laundry conversation]

[Søren Harbel - By the Jesuit Church]

Some wash a huge basket full once a week. Some do special loads of laundry with only certain colours. Some, like me, just throw it all in the drum and pray.

[Søren Harbel - The Little Black Dress]

This brings me to the important step; the hanging…... The way in which a person chooses to hang their laundry. The delicates in the second row at the back for no one to see. The arranging by size, or type of laundry. The t-shirts together, the socks together, the trousers together. Shirts on, or off hangers. There are endless fascinating combinations. Laundry is personal!

[Søren Harbel - Turtleneck]

In particular, I admire Venetians lucky enough to have an apartment with a canal on one side. Great apartments, but often resulting in the daunting task of hanging their laundry and slowly sliding the string through the bracket on the other side of the canal and hoping all will be well when the laundry is suspended high above the dark water below. They hope and pray their clothes will still be there at the end of the day, when it is time to haul on the string and bring another nice, and dry load to safety.

[Søren Harbel - Canal Laundry I]

There can be fear associated with taking your favourite shirt and while holding on to it with one hand setting the peg over the folded corner and releasing it to set the peg on the other corner. It sways. Then you watch your shirt swing a little, while you pull the string across. When there is a canal below, this exercise takes on the special double threat of not only potentially losing your shirt into the dark waters below, but worse seeing it fall and watching it glide away with you unable to do anything about it, because there is no access to the canal on your side of the building. If you rush down to the nearest place you can access the water, you are surely met with nothing more than the sinking feeling that your shirt is gone, never to be seen again!?

[Søren Harbel - Canal Laundry II]

[Søren Harbel - Canal laundry III]

I live in an apartment in Spain where my clothes lines are strung from one side of my apartment to the other, across a small interior courtyard. The courtyard cannot be accessed unless you politely ask the shop on the ground floor to be let into the courtyard through a door that is concealed behind a display of olive oil. You literally have to move a half dozen full bottles of oil sitting atop a stack of three cases of oil. 12 bottles to the case. It is not something you want to make a habit of. The shop owner always smiles and lets you move the olive oil, but you know you are causing disruption. You are interfering in the shops business. Taking away, if even for a brief moment the opportunity for a sale. You also know that when you finally reach your dropped item, you are likely to find it covered in pigeon droppings and in need of another wash. Not great.

[Søren Harbel - A balanced load]

Each time I hang a heavy wet towel, or a sheet, I worry about the weight. How many pegs to use. How best to let it swing free, when I know I have to let go and trust the pegs. Spooky.

[Søren Harbel - Gondoliere laundry]

Back to Venice. I have made a lot of photographs of laundry in Venice, and I figured, since it is such an over-photographed city, I would pay my tribute to the city in the lagoon, which I love and have visited more times than I can remember. I have a photograph I made when I was maybe 8 or 9, of my mother, father and grandmother standing by a canal. It is not a good photograph. But it is the first of many I made in the city. It has been followed by many, many rolls of film since.

[Søren Harbel - Venetian laundry III]

This is my tribute to Venice, or laundry, maybe. I don’t know. Venice is such a photogenic place. Even the laundry looks great!

[Søren Harbel - Venetian laundry V]

Here is my wish: May Venice - La Serenissima - be with us for another 1000 years, and may it not turn into Disneyland!

Until next time, ciao!