Nocturnus Genius is a photographic project born academically and sublimated in the desire to explore what lies behind the scenes of one of the world's most iconic and represented cities.
The Lagoon City, usually depicted through stereotypical images of beauty and romanticism, is stripped of its spectacularity to reveal an intimate and hidden side far from tourist flows and commercial representations.
The project draws inspiration from Guy Debord's theories and his psychogeographic drift, a method of urban exploration that favours the subjective experience and emotions aroused by places. It is by following this approach that Ralph Rumney created his guide to Venice in 1957.
The idea of creating Nocturnus Genius matured during an academic path, which led to numerous psychogeographic drifts in various European cities. The decision to focus on Venice was born from the particularity of the city: an entirely pedestrian reality, without vehicular traffic, which at night transforms into a silent and evocative stage.
This work results from a series of nocturnal journeys through Venice, carried out between June and November 2024. It is a research that combines passion for urban exploration with personal sensitivity.
The primary motivation behind the project is the search for the genius loci, the spirit of the place, which in Venice takes on a unique dimension during the night hours.
The absence of tourists and the silence of the night allow the city to reveal its true essence, made of discrete presences and human traces that resist the invasion of tourist consumerism and the commercial appropriation of spaces.
The project goes beyond the spectacularization of Venice to explore its intimate and hidden side. At night, the city flows back from the daytime clamour and reveals itself in all its emotional essence, which is made of lights, shadows, and a delicate balance between human presence and absence.
Through this exploration, the genius loci that describes the spirits of a place emerges in a tiny subset of a city contaminated and permeated by 1603 years of history and the alternation of cultures and populations.
In the past, in ancient Rome, this term indicated a deity protecting space. Today, we interpret it as the set of physical, historical, cultural and emotional qualities that make a place unique.
With its silent backstories and its nocturnal and depopulated streets, Venice becomes a stage for contemplation and introspection. Each image is an invitation to look beyond the surface and discover the hidden side of a city too often reduced to cliché.
The content is structured in two sections, Presences and Absences, which, based on the presence or absence of the human figure in the composition of the images, pass the baton to each other with the aim of transmitting to us the multiple Venetian genius loci. Presences is in turn divided into two subsections: The Resonance of Presence and Moving Figures where the human figure, clear or blurry, represents the essence of the human being as constantly in transit, always halfway between what has been and what will be.
When the human presence emerges with clarity and definition, anchoring each image in the here and now, the distinct and recognizable figures bring with them a sense of connection to the tangible world.
From another perspective, the moving figures carry fragments of an elsewhere, suggesting stories that remain beyond our reach.
Perhaps this is the urban sublime described by Walter Benjamin, who said modern cities are places of fleeting and transitory encounters.
Nocturnus Genius represents the first step of a larger journey, a dream of exploring other cities and urban spaces through the lens of the night. The present and the absent, the human and the divine that hides in every corner of the city.
The project Nocturnus Genius, Backstages in Venice, at Night, materialized in 2025 in a book (published in e-book format on Amazon and in printed format on Blurb) and a website
© Giorgio Colonna 2025, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0