“Fara Fara” – a Film Not Made. Carsten Höller. Humboldt Books

Posted in photography, travel on June 2nd, 2015
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Fara Fara means face-to-face in Lingala and is a musical phenomenon deeply rooted in Congolese culture. Two groups play at the same time at adjacent locations, and the ones who play longest win. In times gone by, disputes were sometimes settled in this way; nowadays, it is more about musical leadership. A Fara Fara is a massive event attracting huge crowds, but it happens very rarely.

This book is about a film where a Fara Fara takes place in Kinshasa, a musical battle between the two major proponents of Congolese contemporary rumba. The film has not been made yet. It will be directed by the artist Carsten Höller and the film director Måns Månsson.

The book contains photographs taken during various preparatory trips, made since 2001 by Pierre Björk, Hoyte van Hoytema, Reed Kram, Armin Linke, Giovanna Silva, Patrik Strömdahl and the directors. The Swedish writer and music cognoscente Elin Unnes provided the text.

Concept: Carsten Höller
Graphic design: Christoph Steinegger/ Interkool
Text: Elin Unnes

PVC softcover, hot foil

€30.00

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Nello stesso momento / At the Same Time. Alessandra Spranzi. Humboldt Books

Posted in photography on May 7th, 2015
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Obsolete things and images, left to their own devices, which I shift out of their context of silent invisibility and uselessness. In a certain sense I am caring for them. The practice of montage opens up unexpected associative, existential and aesthetic possibilities. For years I have been thinking about the often slumbering or exhausted potential that resides in images, going back to observe and utilize anachronistic or humble materials in project that are different, each time, that bring to light or reveal the hidden, irrational side of things and images. To gather, approach, put together, to make meet, is a way of reorganizing or surprising vision and thought, of calling back into play the enigmatic nature of the photographic image that continuously questions us. (A.S.)

Design: Marco Zuercher studio CCRZ

Texts by: Matteo Terzaghi, Clément Chéroux

Language: English / French / Italian

€20.00

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Iran 1970. Gabriele Basilico. Humboldt Books

Posted in photography on May 6th, 2015
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In the summer of 1970, Gabriele Basilico set off from Milan in a Fiat 124, nominally heading for Kabul. The journey towards India was a rite of passage for the flower children generation, and Basilico had plans to take a series of photos to then sell on to some magazine. The journey didn’t quite turn out as planned, but in his personal archive, those shots were carefully stored away, and on more than one occasion, the Milanese photographer thought about turning them into a book. As Luca Doninelli writes in the introduction, this is “Basilico pre-Basilico”, a reportage stretching from Yugoslavia through to Turkey and Iran – which turned out to be the final destination of the trip – in which we may note the inklings of his vocation-to-be. The afterword by Giovanna Calvenzi, Gabriele’s travelling companion on that journey, tells the story of that adventure in an era of unprecedented freedom.

Gabriele Basilico (Milan, 1944-2013) is considered one of the masters of contemporary photography. After graduating in architecture in 1973, he devoted his life to photography. The transformations of the contemporary landscape, the form and identity of the city and the metropolis all served as Gabriele Basilico’s privileged fields of research. “Milano ritratti di fabbriche” (1978-80) was the first of his works to focus on outlying industrial areas. In 1984-85 he took part in the Mission Photographique de la DATAR, the project set up by the French government and entrusted to a group of international photographers with the aim of representing the transformation of the national countryside. In 1991 he took part in a mission to Beirut, a city devastated by fifteen years of civil war. Basilico was awarded numerous prizes, and his works are to be found in prestigious public and private collections, both in Italy and around the world. During his career, he published over sixty books of his own works.

Language: English / Italian

€18.00

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Orizzonte in Italia. Antonio Rovaldi. Humboldt Books & MAN, Nuoro

Posted in travel, Uncategorized on May 6th, 2015
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I spent more than two months alone on a bicycle, travelling along the perimeter of the Italian peninsula, and then two weeks cycling around Sardinia. I put together hundreds of images of horizons which, day after day, came to form a chromatic stave of seas and skies. Finally, from the confines of my studio, image after image, I pieced back together a fair part of the Italian skyline. (A.R.)
Three years passed between the first journey around the peninsula, over the summer of 2011, and the second journey around Sardinia, in the summer of 2014. This book brings together the photographs that currently make up the work Orizzonte in Italia, starting out from the visual, graphical and theoretical notes that accompanied the artist.

Antonio Rovaldi was born in parma in 1975. The artist’s research moves around the relative themes and perceptions of spaces and landscapes, always showing the relations of the different materials used, like that of photography, video, sculptures and drawings. Since 2006 Rovaldi divides his time between Milan and New York. His recent solo shows include: Hirshhorn Museum Washington dc, The Goma Madrid, Museo MAN Nuoro.

Design: Alessandro Costariol & Antonio Rovaldi

Texts by Antonio Rovaldi, Luca Bertolo, Francesco Zanot, Leonardo Passarelli, Lorenzo Giusti, Pier Luigi Tazzi

Language: Italian / English

€30.00

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