Venise Out In

In Venise Out In, Julien Carreyn crafts a richly atmospheric and diaristic photobook that seamlessly intertwines urban exploration, personal memory, and spatial documentation. Set against the wintery backdrop of Venice, the book unfolds as both a literal and psychological journey through the city's ever-shifting layers of time and presence. The narrative begins in the quiet predawn hours, with the photographer alone in the labyrinthine alleyways, immersed in silence and uncertainty. As daylight gradually breaks, so too does the tempo of the city: students, workers, and tourists fill the frame, breathing life into Venice's surfaces.
At the heart of the book is Palazzo Lezze Michiel, Silvia Fiorucci's historic residence in Campo Santo Stefano, which serves as both the subject and the studio. Inside, time seems suspended—caught between the fading grandeur of the past and the promise of future reinvention. An old wooden boat resting on trestles in the entrance hall, peeling wallpaper, piles of rubble, painted murals, and cold, diffused light evoke a state of transition, mirroring Venice's own fragile equilibrium and timeless beauty. Carreyn's lens captures these interiors with a quiet, cinematic gaze—part forensic, part sentimental—imbuing each frame with a palpable sense of time and place.
The book is structured like an aesthetic game, presenting Carreyn's polaroids and analogue photographs according to a simple principle: on the left, the exteriors of Venice; on the right, the interiors of the Palazzo. These juxtapositions harmonize through spontaneously discovered criteria—colors, compositions, plays on scale and distance, shapes, dissimilarities, similarities, and signs—creating a visual dialogue between the urban and the intimate.
This publication is part of a series of four volumes, which also includes Le Moulin des Ribes, L'espace des arts, and Voyage à Kastelorizo.