Founded by Giovanna Silva in 2012, Humboldt Books is a publishing house focusing on travel literature. Paying homage to the scientific expeditions of the XVIII and XIX century, it recounts places and countries, travels and travellers, embracing different disciplines such as geography, literature, art and photography.
She tells real stories unfolding in hot locations, but Vittoria Mentasti is neither a journalist nor a reporter; she acts more as a wandering minstrel. Her stories illustrate facts and data through the lens of a visionary.
Delfino Sisto Legnani brings his experience as an editorial and commercial photographer into his personal research. This is primarily visible in the style of his images, in which the most typical traits of the professional practice – i.e. lighting and staging – constitute an inevitable reference scheme.
Time is the fundamental subject of Domingo Milella’s work. In his often large-scale photographs, traces of the past take the form of a universal writing, which melts with the language of photography to narrate the history of humankind through its relationship with space.
Discipula is an artist collective working in the field of visual research, founded in 2013 by Marco Paltrinieri, Mirko Smerdel and Tommaso Tanini: a social psychologist, a visual artist and a photographer respectively. Discipula produces image-based art projects; they design, self-publish and distribute printed matter, and hold lectures and workshops. Working across a range of media, Discipula delves into the production,…
Federico Clavarino works with symbols. His photographs, often close-ups, represent one subject at a time, a detail, and place it firmly in front of the viewer, leaving no chance to distraction. They are the playing cards of an unknown game, forming a syncopated and hyperbolic narration. The Castle is a series dedicated to Europe. Starting from…
Lele Saveri’s work combines underground culture, fanzines, mysterious atmospheres, classic beauty and vernacular photography. An entangled and immediate melting pot. Barricades, his series on view at 2016 – On new Italian Photography, was made as the 2014 student protests in Hong Kong, against the electoral reform and in support of democracy, unfolded. Fifty years later, we witness…
Bea De Giacomo combines elements hailing from different photographic fields. Fashion, still-life, staged photography and snapshots are mixed and blended together, shaping an innovative and personal language beyond any convention. The protagonist of the body of work in 2016 – On New Italian Photography is maternity, represented through a series of photographs which are so straightforward, that the weight and density of…
The human figure is the favourite and recurrent subject of Francesco Nazardo’s work. Details of the body, in particular. Fragmented and torn to pieces, so that the eye of the viewer is oriented and inevitably voyeuristic. Placed within familiar and fairy atmospheres, his characters perform enigmatic gestures, rather than codified and shared actions. They methodically lead…
Teresa Giannico’s research instills doubt on the documentary value of photography trough a process of reconstruction of reality. Her works are the result of a series of consecutive steps, which shape a clear stratification: the subjects of Lay Out, the series on view at 2016 – On New Italian Photography – once the original pictures from…
Planar Books is a publishing house founded in 2015. It is directed by Antonio Ottomanelli (who was recently appointed among the 2016 Foam Talents) and promoted by Planar, a non-profit organization dedicated to photography, born in Bari by the will of Anna Vasta, Antonio Ottomanelli, Letizia Trulli and Francesco Stelitano. Planar Books promotes photographic and artistic…
Allegra Martin’s work takes inspiration from the photographic tradition of landscape, territory and architecture, and renovates it: her photographs introduce a narrative. They do not tell stories and there is no linearity, however the objects she places within the frame seem to be connected by a plot. Atmospheres are suspended. The temperature, cold. Noir scenarios are…
The Cool Couple is an artistic duo composed of Niccolò Benetton (born in Arzignano, Vicenza, in 1986) and Simone Santilli (born in Portogruaro, Venezia, in 1987). Their work is based on a deep observation of very specific and peculiar phenomena, which originate a series of reflections and considerations of global interest on issues such as…
Alessandro Sambini uses photography and video to create installations that interact with the exhibition space and change its perception. The mechanisms and languages of information, communication and television are the main subjects of his work, which explores the control strategies carried out by broadcasting stations and their effects on consumers. The work presented in 2016…
Martina Corà dedicates her work to the most popular uses and functions of photography in order to investigate its social values and communicative meanings. For the two series featured in 2016 – On New Italian Photography, Quadri Cinesi che si Muovono and Ooooolympics respectively, the artist did not take any photographs, building her projects on…
The following interview is part of a series of conversations with the artists and publishers featured in 2016 – On New Italian Photography, running through September 16 in Viasaterna. BlisterZine is a publishing project aimed at promoting the book as an art object. It is run by NASTYNASTY©, a collective founded in 2008 by Emiliano Biondelli…
In A Failed Entertainment, Alessandro Calabrese reflects on the language of photography. Starting from the web search of his own photographs, his works are the result of a process of accumulation that mimes today’s condition of overexposure to images. At the geometric center of the frame, where the images overlap, a dark, thick and illegible…
Skinnerboox is an independent publishing house founded by Milo Montelli in Jesi (Ancona, Italy) in 2014. Dedicated to contemporary photography and its multiple forms, Skinnerboox has published fourteen books by Italian and international photographers so far, many of which have been selected by photography professionals and magazines among the best photobooks of 2015. We asked…