Humboldt Books

Run by Giovanna Silva, Humboldt is an Italian publishing house based in Milan. Humboldt draws inspiration from scientific explorations of the 18th and 19th centuries with the aim of examining travel narrative today. Humboldt collects multidisciplinary experiences, combines knowledge and practices for recounting travels and countries with a watchful and unconventional eye. Humboldt investigates the intersection of journey with geography, literature and art. The publishing house has three editorial lines: Travel Books, Artists' Books, Atlas. A series of special projects and an online section complete the catalogue.

Milan

www.humboldtbooks.com

info@humboldtbooks.com

105 titles

Series:

Everything

2021

English edition

sold out

This collection presents the first five issues of Everything: reports on the studio of the same name led by Kersten Geers, Fabrizio Ballabio, Jelena Pancevac and Guido Tesio at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio.

Nathalie du Pasquier
The Strange Order of Things

2019

English edition

sold out

A reflection on the genealogy of objects (artist's book).

Cloe Piccoli - Palazzo Abatellis Palermo

Cloe Piccoli, Stefano Graziani
Palazzo Abatellis Palermo

2019

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

A contemporary narrative, an artist's book, a surprising journey into a place that we thought we knew.

Salento Moderno – An Inventory of Private Houses in Southern Puglia / Inventario di abitazioni private nel sud della Puglia

2019

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

A photographic inventory.

Nathalie du Pasquier
Gabon 1977 – Un Don Juan chez les gendarmes

2018

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

This publication presents a comic strip made by a 20-year old Nathalie Du Pasquier in remembrance of a six months journey in Gabon. Inspired by a clipping from a Gabonese daily, the cartoon tells the colorful story of a clumsy Don Giovanni. This edition features an introductory text by the artist, the translated strip, and a facsimile of the comic book in original French version.

Manifesta 12 – Palermo Atlas

2018

English edition

sold out

An interdisciplinary analysis of the city of Palermo commissioned by Manifesta 12 and undertaken by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. The research explores the architecture, archaeology and anthropology of the city, its historical archives and personal stories.

Incompiuto – The Birth of a Style

2018

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

This pioneering group study accompanies the reader on a modern Grand Tour amid Italy's contemporary ruins.

Lina Bo Bardi, Studio Julia
Habitats

2018

English edition

sold out

A compilation of Lina Bo Bardi's tenure as director of Habitat, a publication self-dubbed “the magazine of the arts in Brazil”. Between 1950 and 1954, Habitat documented Bo Bardi's early thoughts on Brazilian culture, as well as reflecting her very personal take on modernism. Edited and designed by Julia, with contributions by Tamar Guimarães, Claudia Leisinger, Tony de Marco, Lara Viana and Tuca Vieira.

Joanna Piotrowska
Frantic

2017

English edition

sold out

Frantic brings together black and white photographs, taken in 2016 in Lisbon and later in London, Warsaw and Rio de Janeiro. The series features shelters with their inhabitants as well as shelters photographed on their own. These temporary shelters built inside houses reflect on the general notion of home and the very fragility of the domestic sphere.

Jonathan Monk
One Hundred Meals Between Rome and Berlin

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

A compilation of restaurants receipts collected between Rome and Berlin on which the British conceptual artist reproduced images of works by other artists (Luciano Fabro, Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, André Cadere, Maurizio Cattelan…). Far from being innocent, this appropriationist gesture reflects on the art world economics while displaying a panorama of art history, stretching from the 1960s to the present day.

Roman Signer
A Step Towards the Sea (+ DVD)

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

A Step Towards the Sea tells the relationship between the artist and Italy through a selection of installation views and video works. The accompanying DVD includes an unreleased film and a documentation on every actions carried out in Italy by Signer since the 1990s.

Ernesto Schick
Railway Flora

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

A decade (1969-1978) of observation, classification and illustration of the abusive vegetation infesting the grounds of the international railway station in Chiasso, Switzerland, by botanist Ernesto Schick.

Francesca Berardi
Detour in Detroit

2015

English edition

sold out

The decay of Detroit and its people's resistance in words and photographs (photographs by Antonio Rovaldi).

Mario Bellini
USA 1972

2015

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

sold out

Mario Bellini and his “Kar-a-sutra” space-mobile take a wild photographic ride in America during the seventies.

Haris Epaminonda
Chapters I-XXX

2014

English edition

sold out

Artist's book: a deconstruction of a 16 mm film shot by Haris Epaminonda in Cyprus, embarking on a new set of associations between image and subject, source and information, meaning and abstraction.