Atlante delle emozioni

What is “emotional geography”? Giuliana Bruno answers this question in her Atlante delle emozioni (Atlas of Emotion): an expert and compelling foray into fields ranging from geography to art, architecture, design, fashion, cartography and cinema, on which she explores a varied and fascinating landscape in a unique attempt to condense the cultural history of visual-spatial arts in a single map. Seeing and travelling are inseparable, the author argues, demonstrating this through an evocative montage of words and images that turn the voyeur into a voyager, also revealing that not only sight and site, but also motion and emotion, are invariably connected.

Bruno opens up the world of emotional imagery through artistic movements, historical trajectories  and cultural memories. In doing so she talks about artists such as Gerhard Richter, Annette Messager, Rachel Whiteread and Louise Bourgeois; architects like Daniel Libeskind and Jean Nouvel, and the work of numerous filmmakers including Peter Greenaway and Roberto Rossellini, Chantal Akerman and Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Wim Wenders and Wong Kar-wai. She also discusses the architecture of cinema and its precursors – the cabinet of curiosities, wax museum, anatomical theatre, magic lantern, georama and panorama – garden design, the veduta, the arts of memory and mapping… and, last but not least, her own travels to Italy, the country of her birth.
The fascinating and daring visual journey on which Giuliana Bruno is our guide, offers novel views and interpretations at every turn. Atlante delle emozioni is an affective map that puts us in touch with the mental landscapes and inner worlds of what the author calls “emotional geography”, a highly-significant interpretive category taken up by scholars the world over.