Photography

The book presents 78 photographs that Pier Paolo Pasolini commissioned Dino Pedriali to take over two sessions of two days each at his two houses in Chia and Sabaudia in the second week of October 1975. According to the photographer, Pasolini intended to use them in his last novel, Petrolio, which was published posthumously. Pedriali was to met Pasolini to show him the photos on 2 November 1975, the very same day when the poet’s body was found on the beach at Ostia. As in a film, the images take us with agonizing intensity into the life of the eclectic intellectual, his moments of work and recreation, writing, correcting and drawing, in his medieval hideaway or wandering through the streets. Some are taken from outside the house, penetrating the intimacy of Pasolini’s room to show him naked in a game of studied surprise and unawareness devised by the photographer and his subject so as to give the impression of “stolen” shots. Conjuring up the imagery and poetics of Pasolini’s films, these previously unpublished photographs bearing witness to his legacy and the artistic talent of Dino Pedriali thus become part of our shared heritage.

Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960-70, the first show organized by the Rome-based association Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, founded by Graziella Lonardi Buontempo, initiated a major effort to promote contemporary art, both Italian and foreign. The 33 artists featured are now emblematic of Italian art in the 1960s and ’70s: Vincenzo Agnetti, Carlo Alfano, Getulio Alviani, Franco Angeli, Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Agostino Bonalumi, Davide Boriani, Enrico Castellani, Gianni Colombo, Gabriele De Vecchi, Luciano Fabro, Tano Festa, Giosetta Fioroni, Jannis Kounellis, Francesco Lo Savio, Renato Mambor, Piero Manzoni, Gino Marotta, Manfredo Massironi, Fabio Mauri, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Vettor Pisani, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mimmo Rotella, Piero Sartogo, Paolo Scheggi, Mario Schifano, Cesare Tacchi, Giuseppe Uncini and Gilberto Zorio. Ugo Mulas, the photographer most closely involved with the international art scene at the time, was commissioned to cover the event, which he did in his unmistakable style. The 130 photographs taken, which remained largely unpublished on their author’s death at an early age, now appear in this volume some forty years later. They capture the artists, the installations and the visitors in an extraordinarily lucid photographic reading a crucial exhibition for Italian contemporary art. The book also provides useful insight into the history of photography, shedding light on the photographer’s work and his dialogue with artists. It was during the show’s inauguration that Mulas took one of the first shots of the “Verifications” series, regarded as among the most important photographic works of the period in terms of formal rigour and analysis of the medium.

Photography has come to be identified internationally with the artistic production of Düsseldorf over the last few decades, and the consolidated Düsseldorf School today epitomizes excellence in its highly varied and innovative practice of the medium. The extraordinary success of this phenomenon, developed in a very precise geographic and artistic context, has not given rise as yet, however, to in-depth examination. This book intends to fill the gap with an organic study of a German movement that is comparable in terms of global impact and resonance solely to the Bauhaus in the 1920s. It all started with Bernd and Hilla Becher, who inaugurated the photography course at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1976, precisely when their “typologies” were gaining recognition on the national and international artistic scene. Starting from the renewal of documentary photography pursued by the Bechers with the utmost coherence and commitment, the three generations of artists of the Düsseldorf School have broadened the photographic horizons considerably, venturing with their works into the spheres of multimedia experimentation and digital art. Highly prized on the market and sought after by the world’s leading museums, the works of the Bechers’ former students shed light today on the future developments of the art of photography. Eleven different aesthetic stances and eleven very personal approaches to harnessing the medium’s potential are gathered together in a book that presents the most significant photographs selected jointly with the individual artists concerned. The text by Stefan Gronert (1964) examines the phenomenon and focuses on the members of the Düsseldorf School. An art historian, curator at the Bonn Kunstmuseum since 1993, teacher in the art history department of Bonn University since 2001 and lecturer in the universities of Dresden and Cologne, Gronert has written numerous publications and papers on the photography of the 20th and 21st century.Preface by Lothar Schirmer.

Libraries are spiritual places, sanctuaries of knowledge, temples of wisdom, oases of silence. From the splendid baroque libraries of monasteries to the age-old archives of the most illustrious universities, from the rich cabinets of enlightened princes to the most sober and functional buildings, they all are imbued with a sort of sacral solemnity. Since the outset of her professional career as a photographer in the mid-1970s, Candida Höfer has taken pictures of the interiors of public buildings such as castles, museums, theatres, exhibition spaces and libraries. This book is devoted to the latter. In these pages as never before, the objectivity and terseness characteristic of Candida Höfer’s work succeed in glorifying libraries all over the world of every size and period: the Trinity Library in Dublin, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar shortly before the catastrophic fire as well as the libraries of the Escorial and the Villa Medici in Rome. A witty introduction by Umberto Eco reflecting on the various purposes of an ideal library and how to obviate its managerial shortcomings precedes 137 colour photographs by Candida Höfer constituting a sumptuous celebration of bibliophilism.Preface by Umberto Eco.

The 'analytical line' that emerged in artistic debate in the sixties led to a significant change in the role of photography, the consequences of which are still felt today. In those pivotal years, photography was emancipated from technical virtuosity for its own sake, and opened up to new conceptual practices. Finally legitimsed as art, it became the object of intense theoretical and linguistic analysis. Marinella Paderni starts out from this historical premise to document the work of artists who, from the mid nineties to the present, have metaphorically taken up the legacies of that conceptual season, forging continuity between the avant-garde movements of that period and today's currents in photography. Her analysis examines theoretical debates on the 'reinvention of the medium' and outlines the last two generations of contemporary Italian photography: a scenario that bears witness to the emergence of original visual practices and a multifaceted reflection on photographic language in the era of the dematerialisation of reality.

Throught time, only few books have been devoted to Rome, as artists have always been in awe of the Ethernal City. As many other photographers, Mimmo Jodice waited many years before facing such a project, but his most recent works, especially the one on the myth of the Mediterranean, can be regarded as preparatory to the myth of Rome. Jodice’s eye spans from the ruins of the Ancient Rome to the Renaissance, Baroque and modern architectures, guiding us in a long journey through time and history. The book is a project commissioned by the publisher to Mimmo Jodice and is an independent publication with no connection to any exhibition or event. The volume includes texts by Richard Burdett, Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics and currently chief adviser on architecture and urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics, and Cornelia Lauf, art historian and curator currently teaching at the faculty of Arts and Design at IUAV in Venice.