In Lutter's
conceptual approach to this primitive form of photography, the apparatus
records not only what exists in the world outside but also its own condition.
By choosing to retain the negative, rather than reprinting to create a positive
image, Lutter transforms the visual facts of her chosen environments into
uncanny looking-glass scenes that reflect on the two principal realities of
time and space.

In the works that take Venice as their subject, Lutter
sought to "render a place that exists outside gravity," building on
her previous recordings of industrial landscapes and cities surrounded by
water, such as Old Slip, New York (1995), and Cleveland (1997). Aided by a
serendipitous flood in Venice, she was able to capture mirage-like emanations
of San Marco and Piazza Leoni. These spectral landmarks appear to hover above
their own image, mirrored in the limpid ground on which they rest. Lutter returned
to Venice the following year to record the area where the Grand Canal flows
into the Baccino, which then opens up into the lagoon. It is this unstable body
of water that gives Venice its special ethereal character but that,
paradoxically, threatens the floating city's very existence.