How does daily living amongst saturated color affect a person?
I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I first visited the island of Burano thirty years ago. If you don’t know Burano, it’s a thirty-minute vaporetto ride from Fondamente Nove in Venice. It used to be more of a secret since most people instead would make a beeline for Murano to watch glassblowers and make purchases. But, Burano officially has been discovered (for well over a decade) and it is overrun with tourists in good weather. Still, I go there, when I need a good dose of brilliance. I choose my times carefully, opting for crack-of-dawn, or early evening when day-hoppers are rushing back to dinners and Spritz Aperol’s in the heart of Venice.
I like being in Burano when the locals aren’t eclipsed by selfie-snapping tourists. As I do my photo essays, I wonder what it’s like for the island’s resident seeing THAT much color ALL the time. Do their eyes get fried? Does everything look bland and bleached out when they leave their sanctuary of happy colors?
© Jed Smith
An ultimate form of color therapy?
Maybe I should test this out, and go camp out in Burano for a week or so and chart my moods. Maybe I can pay special attention to what my eyes tell me when I’m back in Treviso, which is incredibly beautiful but lacks any semblance of this kind of saturated color. Even the rainy days in Burano take on the quality of a richly rendered watercolor.
© Jed Smith
© Jed Smith
I love this! To think that Charleston boasts of its rainbow row. The photo with the purple umbrella is my favorite.
Humans are always looking for color and happiness, in spite of one’s condition! I, too, love the purple umbrella. I love that you picked that out as your favorite!