{"title":"Italy in Focus","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom beloved works of Italian photography to lesser-known gems, explore the country through this collection of books.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"cinque-viaggi-1990-98-br-guido-guidi","title":"Cinque Viaggi, 1990-98","description":"\u003cp\u003eBetween 1990 and 1998, Guido Guidi made five separate trips to Milan and its surrounding areas. \u003cem\u003eCinque viaggi\u003c\/em\u003e brings together the photographs made there, forming an investigation of one city and its peripheries in the throes of economic and social transformation. As Guidi follows the canal from out in the suburbs toward the city centre, his attention and visual language move from the vernacular to the metropolitan, from wider horizontal views to vertical ‘cuts’ in the urban fabric, from entire buildings and scenes to glimpsed façades and doorways. Along the way, we also encounter inhabitants: a group of young men gathered in a Pasolini-like scene on a bridge in the city’s outskirts; occasional passers-by working, shopping, or stopping to smoke on the city streets; disconnected couples and disparate individuals whose loose citizenship coheres the urban sprawl.\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eWhile previous books, such as \u003cem\u003ePer Strada\u003c\/em\u003e (2018) and \u003cem\u003eTra l'altro\u003c\/em\u003e (2020), demonstrated Guidi’s fascination with the rural and small-town landscapes of his native region, \u003cem\u003eCinque viaggi\u003c\/em\u003e turns to metropolitan Italy, documenting the dramatic socio-economic changes that have transformed it over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Remnants of rural civilisation and traces of urban expansion are embedded among the first signs of de-industrialisation. These 110 large-format works, many of which have never been seen before, reveal the layers of social and architectural history among which everyday life unfolds. \u003cem\u003eCinque viaggi\u003c\/em\u003e offers an arrestingly subtle picture of Italy's recent past and rumination on its future.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith essays by Corrado Benigni, Antonello Frongia, and Roberta Valtorta.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eAccompanies an exhibition presented by Fondazione MIA \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eat the Monastero di Astino, \u003c\/span\u003eBergamo, Italy from 11 June – 30 September 2021.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLOOK INSIDE\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AlUQ-uGMJFk\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Unsigned","offer_id":40481231208643,"sku":"9781913620325","price":55.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false},{"title":"Signed","offer_id":40481231241411,"sku":"9781913620325S","price":60.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/cover556_bf0f1c18-cd16-4952-a399-5a5055fc1235.jpg?v=1770426928"},{"product_id":"an-attic-full-of-trains-third-printing-br-alberto-di-lenardo-carlotta-di-lenardo-ed","title":"An Attic Full of Trains","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eAt the top of Carlotta di Lenardo grandparents’ house in Italy there is a room which houses the library. A hidden door amongst the bookshelves opens into a secret attic, a large room dominated by an enormous model railway, which her grandfather built and added to throughout his life. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSignificant though it was for her relationship with him, one day during a family lunch he revealed her another of his not very secret passions – his enduring love for photography – and shared with her his archive of more than 8,000 photographs: a body of vernacular work capturing over half a century of life in vivid colour. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnknown in his lifetime, Alberto di Lenardo’s work offers a precursor to some of Italy’s best-loved photographers, such as Luigi Ghirri, with work made across Italy, the USA, Brasil, Morocco, Greece and beyond. In Carlotta’s scrupulous sequencing, \u003cem\u003eAn Attic Full of Trains\u003c\/em\u003e shows us a joyous cross-section of life in the 20th Century: one of beaches and bars, mountains, road trips, lovers and friends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41020178792643,"sku":"9781912339969","price":35.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/cover380_b392d648-981d-4abc-a174-d293c13f6d63.jpg?v=1774956245"},{"product_id":"buon-fresco-br-tacita-dean","title":"Buon Fresco","description":"\u003cp\u003eSt Francis of Assisi was the saint who humanised sainthood. He was a man with an ordinary body and ordinary desires. As Tacita Dean writes, 'He rolled naked in the snow to quell his urges and trod the land on paths and roads that are still wending their way through the hills and forests of Umbria today…. His concerns are contemporary: his love of the earth is ecology, his care for its creatures, animal welfare, and his understanding of his fellow humanity is modern-day social science. He is the saint whom mankind can realistically aspire to emulate, because his humanness, his humanity lies just within our mortal reach.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn her work,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eBuon Fresco\u003c\/em\u003e, 2014, Dean filmed details of Giotto's frescos in the Upper Basilica in Assisi using a macro lens, in order, she said, to have the perspective of the artist himself. Giotto humanised the depiction of people in painting in a parallel way to St Francis's humanising of sainthood, and this moment, when the radical artist depicted the radical saint is an extremely important juncture in the history of art. Frescoes are meant to be seen from a distance, so this book provides a revelatory view of the minutiae and sophistication of Giotto's brushstrokes, which at times anticipates the future canon of mark marking in Western painting.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40481946763459,"sku":"9781910164280","price":85.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/BuonFresco_Cover1.jpg?v=1742989709"},{"product_id":"the-flying-carpet-br-cesare-fabbri","title":"The Flying Carpet","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Flying Carpet\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis an enchanting collection of colour and black-and-white photographs taken in and around Cesare Fabbri’s native Emilia-Romagna and Sardinia between 2005–2015. Under Fabbri’s lens we encounter a silent world roused from its slumber, where objects are animated and personified. Fabbri nods to the photographic practice of Luigi Ghirri, bringing to mind the Italian master’s words:\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e“the camera is a magical toy capable of bringing together the great and the small, illusion and reality, our adult awareness and the fairy-tale world of childhood.”\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003eIndeed, in\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Flying Carpet\u003c\/em\u003e, we encounter scenes that might derive from comics – a rural hut with painted questioning eyes, a plant uprooted and hovering mid-air, and an embroidered carpet lifting up in the breeze. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCesare Fabbri (b. 1971 in Ravenna, Italy) studied photography and urban planning at the IUAV in Venice. In 2007 he took part in the Stuttgart Biennale of Photography and Architecture and was shortlisted for the prize Atlante Italiano 007 organised by Museo MAXXI, Roma. With Silvia Loddo he founded in 2009 \u003cem\u003eosservatorio fotografico\u003c\/em\u003e, an experimental platform for research on photography. This is his first book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Unsigned","offer_id":40481986969795,"sku":"9781910164587","price":35.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Signed","offer_id":40481987002563,"sku":"9781910164587S","price":35.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/FlyingCarpet_cover1.jpg?v=1742989672"},{"product_id":"puglia-tra-albe-e-tramonti-br-luigi-ghirri","title":"Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePuglia. Tra albe e tramonti\u003c\/em\u003e offers a brilliant account of Luigi Ghirri’s relationship with Puglia — a distinctive region at the heel of Italy, which was pivotal in establishing Ghirri’s career and continued to inspire him throughout it. A first visit in 1982 introduced Ghirri to Puglia’s whitewashed streets, luminescent nights, doorways and arches, potted cacti, funfairs, and beaches, as well as a group of artists, critics, and curators who would become his close friends and collaborators. Over the following decade, Ghirri returned to the area almost every year, photographing, exhibiting, and deepening his understanding of its subtle terrain. These photographs, almost all of which are little-known and previously unpublished, capture the textures and rhythms of urban life, delighting in visual coincidence and tactile detail. Their sense of quiet discovery — and the colour film on which they are shot — allude warmly to the area’s identity as a popular holiday destination. Ghirri maps the Apulian territory via the traces left by its inhabitants and visitors in images flooded with the distinctive light of Southern Italy – the bright sun and its eloquent shadows, and the otherworldly aura of neon and streetlights after dark.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eWith texts by Adele Ghirri and Arturo Carlo Quintavalle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLOOK INSIDE\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YMyMGI-ww58\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52467430261002,"sku":"9781913620356","price":65.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/Puglia_angled.jpg?v=1770427012"},{"product_id":"sonata-br-aaron-schuman","title":"SONATA","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e‘Do you know the land where lemons trees bloom, Where oranges glow like gold in a dark leafy gloom…’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1796\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSONATA\u003c\/em\u003e is an extensive body of photographic work made by Aaron Schuman in Italy over the past four years. Rather than attempting to capture and convey an objective reality, these images are consciously filtered through the many ideas, fascinations, and fantasies associated with the country and what it has represented in the imaginations of those countless travellers who have visited it over the course of centuries. Drawing inspiration from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Italian Journey (1786–1788), Schuman pursues and studies what Goethe described as ‘sense-impressions’, reiterating many of the introspective questions that Goethe asked himself during his own travels through Italy: ‘In putting my powers of observation to the test, I have found a new interest in life…Can I learn to look at things with clear, fresh eyes? How much can I take in at a single glance? Can the grooves of old mental habits be effaced?’ The resulting images are curious, quizzical, and entrancingly atmospheric, conveying a foreigner’s sensitivity to details, quirks, and mysteries: cracks that spider across ancient statues and museum walls, paths that have been shaped and trodden over millennia, the piercing eyes and looming presence of saints and gods all around, accumulations of dust, bones, sunlight, and lucky pennies. Using the classical sonata form – three movements moving through exposition, development, and recapitulation — as a guide, Schuman invites us to explore an Italy as much of the mind as of the world: one soaked in the euphoria and terror, harmony and dissonance of its cultural and historical legacies, and yet constantly new, invigorating, and resonant in its sensorial and psychological suggestions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Unsigned","offer_id":41180912320707,"sku":"9781913620585","price":45.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Signed","offer_id":41180912353475,"sku":"9781913620585S","price":50.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/SONATA_angled_c054f60a-ad24-4d7c-82e4-0bbda3976130.jpg?v=1770427047"},{"product_id":"italia-in-miniatura-br-luigi-ghirri-ivo-rambaldi","title":"Italia in Miniatura","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eBetween the late 1970s and mid-1980s, Luigi Ghirri made a series of photographs meditating on the landscape of his native Italy, all within the grounds of a single theme park in Rimini, Emilia-Romagna. The popular tourist destination Italia in Miniatura presents scale models of Italy’s major natural and architectural landmarks, brought together in surreal proximity. Ghirri photographed this fabricated world with a characteristic sensitivity for visual coincidence and irony, illusion and reality, ambiguity and artifice. Reflecting on photography’s own processes of shrinking and representing, these images are among Ghirri’s most distinctive, playful, and conceptually compelling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis new book presents the entirety of Ghirri’s\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn Scala\u003c\/em\u003e series, expanded with numerous previously unseen images, and places them in conversation with work by the park’s founder and designer, Ivo Rambaldi. Rambaldi’s maps, sketches, collages, and reference images, made on exhaustive research trips across Italy, offer an analogous exploration of the possibilities and paradoxes of miniaturisation. Their frank functionality resonates with Ghirri’s embrace of the perspective and tools of the ama-teur. From the dialogue between these meticulous works of representation and fabrication we discover the possibility that, in Ghirri’s words, ‘Perhaps it’s in this very space, one of total fiction, that truth is concealed’.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis publication is brought together by curators Ilaria Campioli, Joan Fontcuberta, and Matteo Guidi, and includes new essays by the curators and by author Simon Garfield. It is completed by a series of images by photographer and theorist Joan Fontcuberta in response to Ghirri’s and Rambaldi’s encounters with the park.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45012768522506,"sku":"9781915743305","price":65.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/ItaliainMiniatura_angled_8a76cc03-d10e-4880-9d7d-ce1af2e2119a.jpg?v=1771173440"},{"product_id":"painting-writing-texting-chantal-joffe-olivia-laing","title":"Painting Writing Texting","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePainting Writing Texting\u003c\/em\u003e chronicles the friendship between painter Chantal Joffe and writer Olivia Laing, which began in 2016 when Joffe approached Laing to ask if they would sit for a portrait. From this unexpected encounter, the two embarked on an expansive and ranging collaboration, fuelled by high-speed conversations about art, books, and their shared attempts to understand the world. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘It feels like we both use portraiture to get at something deeper’, Laing writes in one of the ten essays collected here. Combining these texts with a dazzling sequence of paintings by Joffe, \u003cem\u003ePainting Writing Texting\u003c\/em\u003e explores the strange and risky process by which everyday life is converted into art. More than a record of two artists’ lives, it is an account of friendship itself, and the magical cross-pollination that can occur between words and images. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Unsigned","offer_id":51332192731402,"sku":"9781917651301","price":45.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false},{"title":"Signed","offer_id":51332192993546,"sku":"9781917651301S","price":50.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/PaintingWritingTexting_86090dfd-ae91-4ce6-b390-7debdf983fb5.jpg?v=1770428627"},{"product_id":"terra-infecta-disease-and-the-italian-landscape-andrea-bagnato","title":"Terra Infecta: Disease and the Italian Landscape","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(43, 0, 255);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEbook available via this listing, on \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/geo.itunes.apple.com\/book\/terra-infecta\/id6758011498\" style=\"color: rgb(43, 0, 255);\"\u003eApple Books \u003c\/a\u003eand \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.it\/gp\/product\/B0GHNMXD8N?tag=\" style=\"color: rgb(43, 0, 255);\"\u003eKindle Store\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eTerra Infecta\u003c\/em\u003e, Andrea Bagnato tells an unfamiliar story about a well-known place. Since the early days of tourism, the cities and landscapes of Italy have been bywords for beauty and grandeur. But, at home and abroad, the same places have also been haunted by associations with disease and uncleanliness, often more to do with politics than conditions on the ground.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this gripping narrative study, Bagnato shows how the modern quest for sanitation shaped Italy’s urban and rural landscapes, propelling major transformations from the draining of the wetlands around Venice, to demolitions and replanning in Naples, to the expulsion of the inhabitants of ancient Matera. He argues that current north–south inequalities are founded on spurious medical narratives, and focuses on the real impact on the people caught in their ministrations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRanging from Italian unification to the aftershocks of Covid-19, and drawing on architectural records, medical history, and the author’s own travels, \u003cem\u003eTerra Infecta\u003c\/em\u003e reveals the lived realities of grand schemes, traces of vanished communities, and forgotten histories of collective organisation and resistance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSightlines\u003c\/strong\u003e is a series of essays looking at architecture from distinct points of view, each taking the perspective of a particular entity, history, discipline, or form of writing. View the series \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(43, 0, 255);\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http:\/\/mackbooks.eu\/collections\/sightlines\" style=\"color: rgb(43, 0, 255);\"\u003ehere\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACK","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":51459320676618,"sku":"9781917651240","price":22.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Ebook","offer_id":52440034836746,"sku":"9781917651240E","price":9.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0595\/9372\/0003\/files\/TerraInfecta_Front1_015c64d9-3588-4c9c-8c45-7d944f3a7024.jpg?v=1770428973"}],"url":"https:\/\/mackbooks.eu\/collections\/italy-in-focus.oembed","provider":"MACK","version":"1.0","type":"link"}