Walter Guadagnini

The perfect primer on renowned Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia. Born in Palermo, Letizia Battaglia (1935–2022) took up journalism as a single mother, but discovered that it was easier to sell articles if she could also supply photographs. She became a news photographer for L’Ora, a Sicilian daily newspaper that took a stand against the Mafia and its political and economic connections. Between 1976 and 1991, she was a witness to some of the bloodiest events in Italian history, including the killing of judges, police officers and politicians. While these images brought her international recognition, she strongly opposed the label of ‘Mafia photographer’ and believed that her aim was to seek out life. She built up a many-sided portrait of her Sicilian homeland, developing a special sensitivity to women, girls and young children, and a deep empathy with those living in poverty. Her work stands as proof that both joy and suffering are part of the experience of being in the world.

“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus The artistic direction of the festival – Tim Clark and Walter Guadagnini – maintains the poetic vocation of last year, taking inspiration for the theme of the 2022 edition from a phrase by the great French writer Albert Camus. At a time of great upheaval, a moment of transition and growth that follows numerous extraordinary hardships and crises that have now come to define our era, Camus’s maxim gives us food for thought about the inner forces that drive us as individuals in what we do, in every moment of our lives. A principle that intends to shed light on another facet of human nature; the ability to push back against adversities, to not submit to momentary complications, and of course, courage, without neglecting to mention the ability to persist. The translation of these thematics into the language of photography, and, by natural extension, visual culture at large, focuses on the notion of resistance as well as the different potential reactions to the onset of a new reality. Texts by: Walter Guadagnini, Joan Fontcuberta, Jitka Hanzlovà, Majoli, Mortarotti, Luis Cobelo, Fratelli Henkin, Anna Szkoda Text in English and Italian.

This volume is dedicated to the phenomenon of staged photography, the trend that has revolutionised the photographic language since the 1980s. Through over 100 works, the catalogue tells how photography was able to reach the heights of fantasy and invention between the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st-century, previously almost exclusively entrusted to cinema and painting. Goldfish invading bedrooms, icefalls in the desert, imaginary cities, Marilyn Monroe and Lady D shopping together: all of this can happen thanks to veritable stages set up in order to build a parallel reality, or thanks to new technologies and, in particular, through the increasingly sophisticated use of Photoshop, released in 1990. Photography, the realm of documentation and (presumed) objectivity becomes the realm of fantasy, invention and subjectivity, completing the last decisive evolution of its history. Works by: Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, James Casebere, Sandy Skoglund, Yasumasa Morimura, Laurie Simmons, David Lachapelle, Bernard Faucon, Eileen Cowin, Bruce Charlesworth, David Levinthal, Paolo Ventura, Lori Nix, Miwa Yanagi, Alison Jackson, Julia Fullerton Batten, Jung Yeondoo, Jiang Pengyi. Text in English and Italian.

Photographer of excellence, and among the most appreciated in the contemporary art scene, the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf (1959) is to be considered one of the greatest interpreters of modern portrait photography: he is known all over the world for a photographic style dominated by mysterious and contemplative atmospheres, for his mise en scène and theatrical compositions. In his shots Olaf weaves complex and dramatic narratives. His works are striking in their strangeness, their will to provoke, their sense of solitude and restlessness: they catch glimpses of truth, which reveal the imperfection and the fictitious nature of an apparently perfect world. This rich catalogue represents a journey through the artist's entire production, offering a complete overview of his work: from the beginning with Chessmen, the series that made him internationally famous, awarded at the Young European Photographer competition in 1988, up to the recent Palm Springs project (2018). The volume includes a critical text by Walter Guadagnini and a conversation with the artist. Text in English and Italian.

Man Ray, surrealist master and exponent of the Dada movement, managed to reinvent not only the photographic language, but also the representation of the body and face, as well as the genres of the nude and the portrait themselves. This book brings together around 200 photographs produced from the 1920s right up to his death in 1976, all featuring female subjects.Through rayographs, solarisations and double exposures, the female body undergoes a continual metamorphosis of forms and meanings, becoming an abstract form, an object of seduction, classical memory or realistic portrait, in endless playful and refined variations. Among the protagonists of his shots are Lee Miller, Berenice Abbott, Dora Maar and Juliet, a lifelong companion, to whom is dedicated the amazing The Fifty Faces of Juliet portfolio (1943-1944). But these women were, in turn, great artists: as evidence is presented here a corpus of works dating back to the time - between the 1930s and '40s - of their most direct association with Man Ray and with the environment of the Dada avant-garde and Parisian surrealism. This volume offers a wide survey of one of the most exuberant periods of the 20th century, with authentic masterpieces of photographic art such as the Electricité portfolios (1931) and the very rare Les mannequins. Résurrection des mannequins (1938). Text in English and Italian.

Francesco Bosso (born in Italy, 1959) is a well known Italian interpreter of landscapes and primitive nature via the medium of black and white photography. Bosso's extraordinary mastery of the technique of shooting outdoors in a large format, and his virtuosity in the darkroom, using the traditional analogue process, allows him to obtain wonderful prints on gelatine silver paper, which intensifies the cleanliness of the whites and the depth of the tonal values and contrasts. Text in English and Italian.

Published on the occasion of the great exhibition staged at CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia - this volume retraces the history and legend of 'paparazzi'. 'Paparazzi' is a photographic and cultural phenomenon born during the years in which Rome was considered 'Hollywood on the Tiber River'. The 120 images portray the features of the protagonists of that season - especially the divas and stars of the silver screen, in addition to the photographs illustrating the wild nights in Via Veneto between the 1950s and 1960s. Photos by Tazio Secchiaroli, Marcello Geppetti, Elio Sorci, Ron Galella and many other prominent figures of the time make up (together with pages out of the magazines in which they were published) a fresco of popular communication from back then. Once the heroic season of paparazzi came to an end, that language became a sort of code used in different artistic and commercial contexts, as demonstrated in the final part of the volume by the images of the leading names in today's photography scene such as Alison Jackson, Armin Linke and Ellen von Unwerth. Text in English and Italian.

A history of customs, aesthetics and art, from the 1960s to the present. Beauty told throughout a magnificent selection of photos from the most famous calendar in the world. A history of customs, aesthetics and art, from the 1960s to the present. Text in English and Spanish.