Thierry Vanlee Photography

In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in the Comune of Venice with around 60,000 living in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico). Today the number of habitants living in then historic center has dropped to 50.000. Each year an estimated 20 million tourists visit the historic center of Venice.

2020 Covid brought a halt to the continuous tourist growth, at least temporary. In that year "only" 1.5 million tourists visited Venice. But for the locals it became clear that the “normal” volume of tourists visiting their city is not longer acceptable and discussions are on going to reduce the volume of tourists and give Venice back (at least partly) to the locals. Plans include the introduction of a high tech monitoring system , flexible acces control to the popular areas, entry fees, banning cruise ships,...

I myself live in a touristic city (although not at the scale of Venice) which also has known a serious increase of tourism the last couple of years. This has contributed to an increasing cost of living for locals, decreased the quality of living and resulted in the ongoing “Disneyfication” of the touristic city center. Not only in Venice, and city I live, but everywhere in Europe locals are starting to take action to control the volume of tourists and it’s negative impact on the local communities and individuals.

During my Venice visit I wanted to photograph something else then the Saint Marco square or the Rialto bridgeinstead I focused on photographing locals I randomly met during my walks in Venice hereby not only portraying them but also portraying the touristic behavior that the Venetians (and myself in my own city) oppose.