Serenissima: Venice in Winter

In the new book, "Serenissima: Venice in Winter", Frank Van Riper and Judith Goodman provide a stunning combination of fine art and journalistic photography twinned with lyrical text to capture the visual magic that occurs when "the most serene republic" reclaims itself as a living, breathing city and once more becomes a place "of water-filled streets ...velvet shadows and footsteps echoing off paving stones in the post-midnight silence..." Six years in the making and shot entirely in black and white, "Serenissima: Venice in Winter" combines brilliant architectural imagery with documentary photography in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and the great Italian photojournalist Gianni Berengo Gardin. Frank Van Riper's text shows the same literary mastery that won him a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard and reflects the dreamlike quality of the photographs while also acknowledging the mystery and magic Venice is famous for.