Photography
-15% OffSkyline EN/IT
€ 29,75In 1978, Franco Fontana’s book Skyline helped pave the way for the new Italian photography with its radicalism and typically photographic approach. This book, made in a very simple way, without excessive graphic pretensions, presenting one photograph per page, was the culmination of a work in full maturity, freed from all the tics in vogue in photographic circles, advertising or conventional photojournalism.
Skyline praised no city, no local production, it was a work closed in on itself. Starting from tangible reality, in this case the landscape, and from horizon lines, he excluded all superfluous elements to preserve the essential, the exaltation of forms and colors. Fontana codified his familiar landscapes and unknown expanses in such a way that signs, space, form, and color became the only elements of the image.
With Skyline, before Luigi Ghirri’s famous book Kodachrome and six years before Viaggio in Italia, Franco Fontana was one of the first to question the linguistic possibilities of the chromatic process and the aesthetic characteristics of photography, personally reinterpreting the world around him while initiating a new reading of the Italian landscape.
This book is based on the original Italian edition and soft cover, both in format and presentation and in the number of photographs as set by Paola and Luigi Ghirri. To improve quality, the photogravure has been redone from the slides.
—
Photographs by Franco Fontana
Text by Helmut Gernsheim
Book design Paola Bergonzoni and Luigi Ghirri21 × 27 cm
80 pages
Paperback
Italian/English
Isbn 978-88-98030-63-7
First published September 2023
-15% OffSkid Row EN
€ 34,00The volume is a photographic testimony of the American urban fabric of the late 70’s. Charles H. Traub creates a series of portraits, depicting street tenants of Uptown Chicago and Bowery New York.
The author declares: «I wanted to see, to try to touch at least with my camera the experience of loss». The intent was not to satisfy a sort of voyeurism, but to witness the dignity and humanity of the homeless. They were very different from the contemporary ones; today they are no longer the result of individual destinies but of great social disparities.
A famous book by Nelson Algren, A Walk on the Wild Side, wondered «why lost people sometimes become greater human beings than those who have never been in their lives». Skid Row responds by highlighting a nobility that unites urban communities, even in the worst moments.
Unfortunately, this sensitivity, due to gentrification and indifference, is now systematically suppressed in favor of a transformation made by urban chic.
It is therefore even more necessary to recount these experiences, so as to recall the fundamental role of the “lost nobles” in the construction of the historical identity of a city.
—
Text by Tom Huhn
Book design Bunker21 × 26 cm
112 pages
Hardcover
English
Isbn 978-88-98030-59-0
First published June 2023
-15% OffInvisible EN
€ 49,30Photography is an act of self-awareness towards oneself and one’s cultural background. In his sixty-year career Franco Fontana has photographed what cannot be seen, succeeding in fixing through framing an ‘other’ image that is abstracted from reality, free from the portrayed subject. Geometry, proportions and composition have allowed him to reach, by progressive degrees, a conceptual synthesis that has been translated into linguistic unity and its formal manifestation, images.
Today, the crisis of the liquid society opens to the author the opportunity to explore new territories of the invisible ‘naked eye’, expanding the visual horizon and the iconographic structure while maintaining stylistic coherence and identity. If unity originates from the hybridization of differences, from the affirmation of unity itself originate the differences, in a system in constant balance between conceptual and formal, invisible and visible.
Invisible, a 168-page book with more than 100 photographs, is the restitution of meticulous archival research from which many previously unpublished shots have emerged: from the most experimental research to more intimate evidence of expressive freedom, which constitute the fertile ground from which grew the unmistakable style that has made Franco Fontana internationally famous.
Dedicated to those who know or approach the expressive path of the author, to those who want to explore that inner space, beyond reality, which belongs to the subjective interpretation, where you go in search of the image that is not yet there and that only the sensitivity of the photographer’s eye can capture and translate into a unique and unrepeatable shot. Thus, suddenly, the invisible becomes visible.
—
Photographs by Franco Fontana
Editing by Lorenzo Respi
Book design Bunker22 × 27 cm
168 pages
Hardcover
English
Isbn 978-88-98030-58-3
First published November 2022
-15% Off€ 45,90Early 1980s. From Milan to Marsala, Charles H. Traub composes an ironic and spontaneous portrait of an Italy that today we cannot say whether it really existed. The candid gaze of the American photographer immediately captures the idiosyncrasies of the Bel Paese: laziness, the unbearable and wonderful weight of history, the warm light of the countryside and the vivid light of the sea, the carefree and delightful life of the provinces. Bright blues, reds and yellows engulf the poses and gestures of strangers, transformed into affectionate archetypal caricatures, because Traub has in mind the work of another great master: Federico Fellini.
On his travels in Italy, it is Luigi Ghirri who is his guide: the two do not speak the same language, but share a form of sincere curiosity for what surrounds them and the ability to observe reality with ever new eyes. So it was that in 2012 Traub recognised a lost magic in the photographs from thirty years earlier and decided to make a series out of them. Published for the first time in 2013, Dolce Via Nova renews the original sequence with a wide selection of previously unpublished photographs, edited by Giulia Zorzi and Francesco Ceccarelli, and transforms the book with a new design by Bunker. An essay by poet Luigi Ballerini and a dialogue with Gus Powell complete the work.
–
Texts by Luigi Ballerini, Gus Powell
Book design Bunker21 × 26 cm
144 pages
Hardback
English
Isbn 978-88-98030-49-1
First published June 2022
-15% OffThe Picture Man EN/IT
€ 40,801963. Gusmano Cesaretti, 19 years old, a passion for the ‘American dream’, a camera and a one-way ticket to New York. Thus was born the incredible story of ‘The Picture Man’, the man who, from the province of Lucca, without speaking English, landed in the United States, becoming perhaps the most authoritative and direct eye on American subcultures.
First in Chicago, then in Los Angeles, Gusmano and his camera are one and the same, his eye documenting first-hand the urban subcultures of the time: metropolitan jazz, the beat generation, the East L.A. of the Chicanos, the Mexican mystical experiences. He is in the right place at the right time, a direct and reliable eyewitness, with his raw, instinctive, vibrant and authentic style of so-called street photography, contributing to the genesis of the Western collective imagination. He later worked, as director of photography and image consultant, alongside some of the most influential directors of late 20th century American cinema, such as Michael Mann, Tony Scott and Marc Forster.
It is a life ‘on film’ that of Gusmano, traced in this book thanks to an interview conducted in 2018 by young photographer and creative director Stefano Lemon, who outlines his human experience and artistic career. 168 pages and 85 photographs, most of which have never been published, recount the stages of an extraordinary journey that began more than fifty years earlier, creating a sort of magical passing of the baton.
—
Photographs by Gusmano Cesaretti
Preface by Jeffrey Deitch, Chaz Bojorquez
Texts by Stefano Lemon
Calligraphy by Luca Barcellona
Book design by Bunker17 × 25 cm
168 pages
Swiss style paperback
English/Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-38-5
First published November 2021
-25% Off€ 16,50Guido Scarabottolo, one of Italy’s best-known and best-loved illustrators, presents in this volume a never-before-seen aspect of his artistic production: not drawings, but a series of thirty-two photographs that the author took during a journey of discovery through Iran, where he was invited on the occasion of the Tehran Book Fair. Deeply fascinated by the places and people he encountered while visiting cities, villages and the desert, Scarabottolo felt the urge to fix his impressions with an instrument that would allow him to capture them quickly. In spite of the unusual medium, all his sensitivity as a man and artist emerges from these shots. He is also capable of casting his gaze on unexpected subjects that manage to render different aspects of the complexity of Persian culture with great simplicity and effectiveness.
Scarabottolo, graphic designer and illustrator, proves with this work that he is an artist who is not afraid to momentarily abandon his favourite expressive technique and let himself be guided only by his own gaze and curiosity. Edited by Melania Gazzotti and Giulia Giazzoli, the volume is enriched by a critical text by Andrea Pinotti, lecturer in aesthetics, writer and expert in visual culture.
—
Edited by Melania Gazzotti and Giulia Giazzoli
Texts by Guido Scarabottolo, Andrea Pinotti, Melania Gazzotti and Giulia Giazzoli
Photos and illustrations by Guido Scarabottolo
Book design by Bunker21 × 28 cm
64 pages
Bound with elastic
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-11-8
First published November 2017- -15% Off€ 55,25
Cesare Leonardi. L’Architettura della Vita / The Architecture of Life narrates the eclectic and interdisciplinary character of Cesare Leonardi’s research. Busy in a continuous and passionate investigation, far from notoriety despite the fact that some of his works are found in the most important museums of the world and are published on international magazines, Cesare Leonardi is the example of a life dedicated to architecture and planning. Through a flow of images, interspersed with thematic essays, his production is described: a kinetic system that has passed seamlessly from design to photography, from photography to drawing, from drawing to architecture, from architecture to sculpture.
The book comes out on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, organized by the Galleria Civica of Modena, from September 15, 2017 to February 4, 2018. A tribute from the city of Modena to the work of Cesare Leonardi over the course of four decades. The publication would not have been possible without the decisive contribution of the Cesare Leonardi Architect Archive, in particular thanks to the efforts of Andrea Cavani and Giulio Orsini, researchers at the Archive and curators of the catalog.
More than 500 images including photographs, drawings, sketches and drafts show the work of Cesare Leonardi throughout his life, accompanied by texts written specifically by Veronica Bastai, Stefano Bulgarelli, Andrea Cavani, Andrea Costa, Daniele De Luigi, Eugenio Gazzola, Giancarlo Martinelli, Lucia Miodini, Giulio Orsini, Jessica Pagani, Francesco Samassa and Paola Viganò.
—
Edited by Andrea Cavani & Giulio Orsini
Book design Bunker23.5 × 28.5 cm
320 pages
More than 500 images
Hardcover
Italian/English
Isbn 978-88-98030-24-8
First published September 2017 - Out of Stock€ 38,25
Inspired by the late, great cartoonist William Steig and his famous book, The Lonely Ones (which combines Steig’s line-drawn characters with simple lines of dialogue with themselves), photographer Gus Powell has created his own ‘lonely ones’. Quiet yet evocative colour photographs of interiors and landscapes, inhabited by people, animals and inanimate characters.
Each photograph is accompanied by an evocative text, which functions in the opposite way to a caption: each of the 40 images in the book is hidden by the page folded in on itself, on the back of which the sentence is printed. Thus each photograph is revealed one by one by opening the page. “Which way to the convention?” comments the photograph of a butterfly in mid-air.
Lazy Dog publishes this new edition of the book in three languages, enriched in addition to English by translations into Italian and Japanese.
—
Text and photographs by Gus Powell
Book design by Gus Powell12.5 × 18.6 cm
90 pages
40 photographs
Hardback
English/Italian/Japanese
Isbn 978-88-98030-06-4
First Edition February 2017 - Out of Stock€ 31,45
«I like the idea of telling stories about surfing, the group of people we put together… That’s what I like most»
— Luca Merli“Onde Nostre. Guarda dove ti ho portato” is an exploration of the Italian surf culture through the captivating images and suggestive artworks by a group of surfers, film-makers, photographers and surf personalities.
The Italian surf scene is captured in wonderful and emotional shots by Giovanni Barberis, Matteo Ferrari and Filippo Maffei who are – together with Luca Merli, film-maker and true soul of Onde Nostre project – involved into the surf world themselves.
Luca Barcellona, with his unmistakable lettering, contributes to express and transmit the mood of the project starting from the cover.
The book contains the audio-cd with the soundtrack of the journey told in the pages. The disc – also available as a free download for the purchaser – proposes tracks, some unpublished, taken from the two movies and the episodes produced for the web by Onde Nostre.—
Photographs by Giovanni Barberis, Matteo Ferrari, Filippo Maffei
Art direction by Luca Merli
Calligraphy by Luca Barcellona
Book design by Bunker16.5 × 22.5 cm + audio CD
152 full color pages
Over 100 photographs
Silver embossed hardcover
Italian/English
ISBN 978-88-98030-07-1
First published June 2015 - -30% Off€ 27,30
There is more than what meets the eye in Matthew Albanese’s captivating works. From an erupting volcano to a sweeping tornado to the landing on the moon, nothing is quite what it appears to be. Welcome to the extra-ordinary world of Matthew Albanese, where glaciers are not made of ice but of sugar, salt, egg whites, food coloring, flour and light.
Albanese meticulously fabricates and then photographs small-scale models of complex panoramic vistas, such as wind-blown willows on stormy rivers and raging forest fires, using humble materials including cotton batting, boiled sugar candy, sand, and feathers. By masterly manipulating the scale, depth of field, balance and lighting, he alters the appearance of the materials to create dramatic and emotionally evocative landscapes. This beautifully designed book brings together for the first time all the photographs in the Strange World series, including a new work made especially for the publication. The book features an engaging essay by David Revere McFadden, behind-the-scenes images of the miniature worlds, and insightful text by the artist on the process of his work.
—
Tests by Matthew Albanese
Essay by David Revere McFadden
Book design Pitis22.5 × 28 cm (9 × 11”)
96 pages
105 color plates
Hardcover
English
Isbn 978-88-98030-03-3
