Frankenfish 法蘭肯魚 フランケンフィッシュ

There are corners of Venice where Carnevale seems less like a festival and more like a doorway.

Away from the glittering crowds of Piazza San Marco, beyond the palazzi, chandeliers and procession of beautiful masks, the city becomes quieter. The calli narrow. Ancient brickwork emerges from crumbling plaster. Footsteps echo strangely between buildings, and passages disappear into shadows before reappearing somewhere beside a canal.

It was in one of these forgotten streets that I encountered Frankenfish.

At first, I saw only an extraordinary flash of blue.

Leaning against the decaying wall was something that seemed to have crawled from the Venetian lagoon and dressed itself for Carnevale. Its enormous head resembled a fantastic deep-sea creature assembled by some eccentric Victorian inventor: fins of delicate lace, metallic bones, wires, jewels and strange mechanical appendages. An angler’s lure curved above its face as though designed to attract unsuspecting travellers through the darkness.

Beneath this monstrous creation stood an elegantly dressed figure in ivory, turquoise and blue.

Beautiful.

Absurd.

And just slightly terrifying.

Across the alley, another traveller had stopped.

Dressed in tweed, spectacles and a flat cap, he looked like someone who had taken a wrong turn somewhere around 1925 and unexpectedly wandered into a Gothic science-fiction film. She stared at the creature. The creature stared back.

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Perhaps she was wondering whether this strange apparition was simply another Carnevale costume.

Perhaps Frankenfish was wondering whether she looked edible.

That is the wonderful thing about photographing the Venice Carnevale. Reality becomes negotiable.

For a few weeks each year, Venice fills with characters who seem to have escaped from paintings, fairy tales, nightmares and forgotten centuries. Yet sometimes the most memorable encounters happen far from the famous locations. An ordinary doorway, a deteriorating wall and a dark Venetian passage can suddenly become a stage.

And Frankenfish seemed perfectly at home here.

I imagined that somewhere beneath Venice there must be a secret laboratory.

Perhaps centuries ago, an eccentric Venetian scientist had become obsessed with the creatures brought from distant seas by merchants of the Republic. Working beneath his palazzo, he began combining fish, machinery and human ingenuity, searching for a creature capable of surviving both beneath the lagoon and upon the streets above.

His experiment disappeared.

The laboratory was forgotten.

But every Carnevale, when mist settles over Venice and the boundary between fantasy and reality becomes particularly thin, Frankenfish returns.

He wanders the ancient calli.

He watches from darkened doorways.

He follows the sound of footsteps across little bridges.

And occasionally, he meets an unsuspecting traveller who stops just long enough to wonder:

Is that really a costume?

For one fleeting moment, in one forgotten Venetian alley, the answer didn’t seem quite so obvious.

Frankenfish — Venice Carnevale

Where monsters wear masks, strangers become characters, and every alley has a story waiting in the shadows.

Frankenfish is the costume for the 2026 Venice Carnevale by two young costumers Quitterie Lesaule and Kate Jenkins. The Venice Carnevale is not solely about masks. Many local Italians prefer painted faces/ historical costumes nowadays. In addition, cosplays and modern costumes are becoming more popular as well.

For Frankenfish, we deliberately picked a rainy morning for the photo shoot.

Some new idea from all of us for the 2026 Venice Carnevale...