PHOTO BOOKS

Guido Argentini
teNeues Publishing Company

The sculpture of Michelangelo, Rodin, and Brancusi, serve as the inspiration for Guido Argentini's masterly photographs of the female nude. Published together for the first time in this breathtaking collection taken over a period of seventeen years, Argentini's astute focus on the female form achieves the transformation of bodies into objects of art. We are presented with two distinct series of spectacular photos. The first is shot in locations around the world in a way that fuses the body with the landscape while in the second, dancers and gymnasts are photographed in contorted positions in the studio. Covered with a veil of oil or a coat of metallic paint and exquisitely lit, the bodies leap off the page with an astounding three dimensionality.

Bepi Zanfron
Agenzia fotografica Zanfron

Raul Corrales
s.e.

s.a.
s.e.

Chiara Samugheo
Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta

AA.VV.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

During the late 1960s and 70s, a paradigm shift occurred within visual culture: photography and the moving image were absorbed into critical art practices. In particular, these mediums were used to record ephemeral or performative events and to render visible conceptual systems or to question the supposed objectivity of representation itself. This volume focuses primarily on artworks from the last decade and proposes that the extensive use of reproducible mediums in today's art has its roots in an earlier formative period. By the end of the 70s, many artists turned to photography as a vehicle through which to critique photographic representation and to subvert an art system premised on the notion of the original. While this practice came to define much of the 80s postmodern art, its legacy for the 90s was essentially the license to indulge in photographic fantasy, image construction, and cinematic narrative. Artists working today freely manipulate their representations of the empirical world or invent entirely new cosmologies. They process their subject matter through conceptual systems or use digital processes to alter their images. Some directly intervene in the environment, subtly shifting components of the found world and establishing their quiet presence in it; others fabricate entire architectural environments for the camera lens. This current state of the arts and its recent history are represented via more than 150 works by 55 artists, including Nam June Paik, Kara Walker, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle, Fischli & Weiss, Ann Hamilton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager, Cindy Sherman, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Elger Esser, Andreas Gursky, Candida H fer, Thomas Ruff, J rge Sasse, Thomas Struth, Olafur Eliasson, Roni Horn, Gabriel Orozco, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Matthew Barney, Gregory Crewdson, Anna Gaskell, Sam Taylor-Wood, Oliver Boberg, James Casebere, Thomas Demand, Vanessa Beecroft, Wolfgang Tillmans, Patty Chang, Trisha Donnelly, Stan Douglas, Pierre Huyghe, William Kentridge, Steve McQueen, Shirin Neshat, John Pilson and Gillian Wearing.

Giuliana Scimé
Edizioni Nova Milano

Isabel Muñoz
Leonardo arte

Albert Saladini
jazz à juan

AA.VV.
Edition Braus

Luigi Erba
Fotografia Italiana

Andrei Navrozov
Hurtwood Press

Andrei Navrozov has described himself as a political refugee from Russia, a cultural refugee from America, and a gastronomic refugee from Britain. Yet the theme of his new book is altogether less flippant: where in the homogenizing and modernizing Europe would the hardened individualist find a last refuge? The answer to that question takes the reader on an uncompromising, occasionally eccentric but deeply personal and always entertaining travelogue with the author on his first day in Rome to his last night at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, and through a number of Italian cities, with sidelong glances at 70s Moscow, 80s New York, and 90s London. All of which leads him to "home" and the end of his flight from social progress: Palermo. Italy. Accompanying him to each of these destinations is the author's Phiz, the Russian photographer Gusov. His forty-eight arresting images serve to give another dimension to Navrozov's ideas, arguments, and impressions.

Gino Oliva
Fantoni & C.

s.a.
ERI Edizioni Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana

Roberto Grillo
Edizioni Fotogramma

Dan Free
TUTTLE Publishing

Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914 is a cultural and engineering history of railway building in Japan during the Meiji era.

The importance of early railways in the industrialization of the United States and Europe is a fact all of us are familiar with. To witness the amazing parallel development of the railways in Japan, happening at much the same time as America was connecting its vast hinterland to the East and West coasts, is an eye-opening realization.

In Early Japanese Railways 1853–1914, Dan Free tells the fascinating story of the rise of Japanese rail amidst a period of rapid modernization during Japan's Meiji era. Leaving behind centuries of stagnation and isolation, Japan would emerge into the 20th century as a leading modern industrialized state. The development of the railways was a significant factor in the cultural and technological development of Japan during this pivotal period. Free's rare photographic and historical materials concerning Japan's early railways, including a print showing the miniature steam engine brought to Japan by Admiral Perry aboard his "Black Ships" to demonstrate American superiority, combine to form a richly detailed account that will appeal to students of Japanese history and railway buffs alike.

This one-of-a-kind book, Early Japanese Railways 1853–1914, illuminates for non-Japanese-speaking readers the early history of Japanese railroads, and in the process the fascinating story of Japan's prewar industrial modernization. Anyone interested in train history or mode trains will find this book a fascinating read.

Tolumitsu Iwago
Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

Paul Elledge
Mohawk Paper Mills

AA.VV.
s.e.

Giulia Bologna
Biblioteca Trivulziana