Venice isn’t short on beautiful and interesting views. The Grand Canal. St Mark’s Square. Almost any bridge over a canal with a gondola going under it at sunset. It’s an easy city to photograph which is why I found it a complicated city to work in. If everyone is taking the same photo, me included, what’s a good photo in Venice? I didn’t find the answer on my first visit but I felt like I did on my second.

Towards the end of our first visit to Venice I looked up and noticed a washing line hanging out of someones window. Their washing was hanging over the street below. Over my head in fact. One loose peg and I’d be covered in a strangers underwear. I was puzzled this style of drying laundry. On our second visit to Venice I wanted to explore it. I set a brief of any time I saw laundry we’d go down the side street to investigate. At the very least we would see new things.

In the above photo I felt that this captured every day Venice. It shows the functional side of life there. Your back door or kitchen window opens on to the canal. Maybe they’re not even the back doors? Maybe these are the fronts of houses? This is the average person’s street not the Grand Canal. It’s beautiful.

I love that we got here just as the evening sunlight was bouncing off a white building to light up the yellow building across the canal. A man sits and enjoys a drink of some sort and the view towards sunset. A single yellow dress, the same yellow as the building opposite it, hangs from the washing line. This is the Venice I enjoyed touring most. It was our adventure around the city. No-one would be looking for these moments and yet they were worth capturing. I felt my photographs had value and meaning to them.