Laundry is not exactly the stuff of Island Stylebook. That is until we found the photographs of Holly Smith Pedlosky. For 17 years Pedlosky has been photographing the art of hanging laundry by the Casalinghe... traditional Venetian housewives.
Is she capturing beauty in the mundane? Or is she making the mundane just seem beautiful? It doesn't matter. Holly is a master of her camera.

•"It's how I present myself to the world," said one Casalinghe.

•"What's at stake is a woman's style; some women have it, some don't," Holly's Venetian friend, Alberta, remarked

•Another laundress told Holly that "I order my corda (laundry line) the way I order my home and family. If these things don't hold together, the world falls apart."
She returns to the islands in the Venetian lagoon over & over again, getting to know the women and their laundry-hanging techniques (and trying to master the difficult Venetian dialect). As Holly gets to know these women, she realizes "that for them this practice has deep-rooted meanings."

But laundry needn't be your reason for discovering Venice. The Venetian islands are a treasure trove of "Kodak moments." Holly can help direct your photographing adventure with her Venetian Light Workshop, as a faculty member of the International Center of Photography in N.Y. City.

Beginners to advanced photographers are welcome. Young (16 yrs.) to older (75yrs.) have taken her course. The usual group is about 15 students. A theme is determined for every participant. Beginners get more fundamental help & advanced photographers get more free time to do their thing. A studio in a palazzo on the Grand Canal serves as the meeting point. Students stay at one of our favorite places, The Pensione Accademia.

Stateside, Holly teaches the history of photography & making photographic books, among other courses at the Radcliffe Seminars of Harvard University. Check out the website produced by her talented students. The result of a year-long Radcliffe course www.photographyatelier.org .

Then go to Holly's site, www.arts-cape.com/hollypedlosky for Venice workshop information & to learn more about this very exciting photographer. You'll also see some more of Holly's laundry lessons...through her wonderful Casalinghe photos. You'll never look at a clothesline quite the same way!