“Photography” is not about “Photography”, it’s about you!

I'm Marc De Tollenaere, a photographer based in Venice, Italy, and a Leica Akademie Italy instructor since 2014. For more than a decade, I have also been a Certified Leica Photographer, sharing my experience through workshops, masterclasses, and photographic journeys around the world.

Throughout my career, I've had the privilege of working alongside some of the most influential photographers of our time, including Steve McCurry and David Alan Harvey. These collaborations have profoundly shaped both my vision and my approach to documentary photography.

In 2005, my reportage Children of the City of Joy, photographed in Kolkata, India, received international recognition at the Day's Japan World Photojournalistic Award. In 2008, I was honored again at the Italian Professional Award for my documentary work on the Treviso Christian Centre.

My photographs have been exhibited at Photokina Cologne (2008), Photoshow Rome (2010), Bassano Fotografia (2011) alongside Douglas Kirkland, and at the Leica Galerie Milan in 2015, 2017, and 2026.

Since 2010, I have been organizing and leading photographic workshops across India, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Iceland, Turkey, and Cambodia, helping photographers refine not only their technical skills but, above all, their personal way of seeing.

In 2020, my photographs were featured in the book Inspiration Leica Akademie and exhibited at the Leica headquarters in Wetzlar, Germany, alongside the work of other leading Leica photographers.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I documented an unprecedented, deserted Venice—a project that led to a collaboration with the French national television network TF1. Throughout 2021 and 2022, I worked on several documentaries covering subjects such as the impact of large cruise ships on Venice, the Historic Regatta, and the effects of climate change on the Venetian Lagoon.

In April 2021, the Italian television program Geo on Rai3 dedicated a feature to my project The Last Venetians, following me as I photographed people inside their homes. The documentary was later translated and broadcast on French and German television.

In 2022, I published One, No One and Fifty Thousand – Inside Venetians' Houses with Biblos Edizioni, a photographic project born from my desire to tell the story of Venice through the faces, homes, and lives of those who still truly belong to the city.

In 2026, I published A Beautiful Game, a conceptual artist's book exploring the continuous evolution of human existence through a visual dialogue with the fragments of Heraclitus of Ephesus. The book was presented in Arles by David Alan Harvey and exists in an edition of only 50 handcrafted copies worldwide. Each volume has been printed using museum-quality carbon pigment inks and bound entirely by hand, making every copy a unique object. Conceived as both a photographic work and an artist's piece, A Beautiful Game immediately became a highly sought-after collector's edition.

Photography, for me, has never been about simply documenting reality. It is a way of understanding people, revealing what lies beneath the surface, and creating images that endure beyond the moment they were made.