Humboldt Books - Les presses du réel

Carlo Levi a San Costantino Albanese – Archivi della Basilicata – Vol. 2

2020

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Three multidisciplinary essays—from cultural anthropology to photography analysis—based on visual archives documenting the visit of writer, painter and politician Carlo Levi to an Albanian community in Southern Italy (second volume in the series “Archivi della Basilicata”).

Antonio Rovaldi
The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill – New York City

2019

English edition

This publication documents a visual research on the perimeters of all five boroughs of New York, featuring a photographic portfolio, a set of maps and a series of texts.

Luca Vitone
Romanistan

2019

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Both a journal and a photographic report, this publication documents Luca Vitone's travel from Italy to India, in the footsteps of the first Roma migrations between the eighth and fourteenth centuries.

La Bonifica di Bradano e Metaponto – Archivi della Basilicata – Vol. 1

2019

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

The first in a series of publications dedicated to the exploration of the archives of the Italian region of Basilicata from an artistic perspective. This volume focuses on areas affected by the reclamation of the water system.

Lele Saveri
Hong Kong Barricades

2019

English edition

Images of the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong by Italian photographer Lele Saveri.

Aesthetics and Politics of Logistics

2019

English edition

Aesthetics and politics of architecture of logistics.

Neither Nor / Né altra né questa – The challenge to the Labyrinth / La sfida al Labirinto

2019

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

The catalogue of the Italian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale investigates and develops the theme chosen by the curator Milovan Farronato for the exhibition: the labyrinth.

Keren Cytter, Antonio Grulli
Tel Aviv – Jerusalem Diary

2019

English edition

A travel diary / a screenplay.

Mario Schifano
America 1970

2019

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Mario Schifano's road trip in the United States.

Linda Fregni Nagler
Yama no Shashin

2018

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

This publication presents a project by Linda Fregni Nagler about the photographic “School of Yokohama”, which emerged during the Meiji era in Japan. Over the past ten years, the artist has collected hand-colored photographs of this period representing Mount Fuji. She re-photographed them, printed them and colored them by hand, according to colorization method of that time.

Gabriele Basilico
Free Zone 2006

2018

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

In 2006, film director Amos Gitai invited Gabriele Basilico to undertake a journey retracing the locations of the shooting of Gitai's film Free Zone, on the demilitarized zone between Israel and Jordan. This publication follows this unique photographic project.

Vincenzo Castella
Mississippi / Tennessee 1976

2018

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

A photographic journey in search of the very last bluesmen. The birth of a vocation for the Italian photographer.

Federico Lodoli, Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli
Towards the Altar of a God Unknown – Liberian Notes

2018

English edition

Federico Lodoli and Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli went twice in Liberia to carry out a study on the war. This publication gathers their travel memoirs, interviews with Liberian warlords and a photographic reportage.

Paolo Gioli
Etruschi Polaroid 1984

2018

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

This publication features an unpublished series of artworks by artist Paolo Gioli based on polaroid images of etruscan funerary sculptures set in the Italian city of Volterra. The volume is supplemented by a text on Volterra by novelist D. H. Lawrence, and an essay by historian of photography Roberta Valtorta.

Hämatli & Patriæ

2018

trilingual edition (English / German / Italian)

Catalogue documenting an eponymous exhibition project which interprets contemporary issues such as migration, nationalism, populism and identity, using the symbolism in the Flemish painting of 1570 by Simon de Myle entitled Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat.

Hercule Florence
Le Nouveau Robinson

2018

English edition

Through a series of scientific contributions and archives, this publication recounts the extraordinary character that was Hercule Florence—an explorer, an inventor and an artist, considered one of the inventors of photography.

Hilario Isola
Oh… My God! – Bamboo Scaffolding on Myanmar Pagoda

2017

English edition

This artist's book collects a photo series taken in spring 2017 in Myanmar, one of the Buddhism's sacred places, where one hundred or so temples have been destroyed by a recent earthquake. Now the pagodas affected by the earthquake, covered by thin bamboo structures, have taken original and unexpected forms, hanging between architecture and art, life and destruction. This temporary condition allowed Isola to catalogue, study and also to develop a sort of appropriation.

Rita Canarezza & Pier Paolo Coro
San Marino – 30th September 1950

2017

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

This publication documents a previously unreleased video project by Canarezza & Coro inspired by poet Eugenio Montale's unusual walk across the Italy-San Marino border to receive a Literature Prize in a context of tensions between the two States. The volume also includes fragments of forty-seven poems by Eugenio Montale, modified by the two artists.

Gabriele Basilico
Glasgow 1969

2017

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Then architecture student Gabriele Basilico photographs the suburbs of Glasgow on a late summer afternoon of 1969, with its Scottish kids, terrains vagues, and 19th-century industrial archaeology. A photographic baptism for Basilico, who will become one of the main contemporary figures of the medium. The publication of this early series is completed with texts by Umberto Fiori, Pippo Ciorra, and Giovanna Calvenzi.

Alberto Lattuada, Federico Patellani
Matera 1953

2017

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

The troglodyte town of Matera in Southern Italy has fascinated generations of filmmakers since the Post-war area. Documenting the making of the 1953 film She-Wolf by Alberto Lattuada set in Matera, photographer Federico Patellani provides a unique insight of the life of the provincial city in the fifties.

Nanna Debois Buhl
Intervals and forms of stones of stars

2017

English edition

A biological investigation of a Nordic man-made beach landscape through a series of cameraless photographic registrations of the site's flora, fauna, and particles.

Michele Lombardelli
Los Angeles 1989 Tokyo 1991

2017

English edition

Los Angeles 1989 Tokyo 1991 brings together a collection of images from two of the most complex and undefinable metropolises on the face of the Earth, the social and urban form of which is ceaselessly reshaped by the minimal existence of millions of people in movement. Lombardelli's photographs are also cinematographic homages to the works of Wim Wenders and Yasujirō Ozu.

Gianni Pettena
The Curious Mr. Pettena – Rambling around USA – 1971-73

2017

English edition

The Curious Mr. Pettena recounts various steps along a journey, through cities and wide open natural spaces, undertaken by the anarchitect Gianni Pettena at the start of the 1970s across the United States.

Ugo Mulas
Danimarca 1961

2017

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

In 1961, L'Illustrazione Italiana sends critic Giorgio Zampa and photographer Ugo Mulas to carry out a reportage in Denmark. Along their meetings with writer Karen Blixen or Nobel Prize Nils Bohr, the two correspondents also witness the new manifestations of the Scandinavian lifestyle, characterized by its design and its modern habitats.

Diego Perrone
War Games

2017

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Stemming from a project dedicated to the city of Genoa and in particular to its relationship with the sea, this photographic artist's book extends the site-specific glass sculpture designed by Perrone inside Villa del Principe's Hall of the Shipwreck.

Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi
The Arrow of Time – Notes from a Russian Journey – 1989-1990

2017

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

This publication reproduces the experimental filmmakers' notebooks from their journey in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. Gianikian & Ricci Lucchi undertook this travel to gather the memories of the cinematographic literary and artistic Russian avant-garde of the '20s and '30s, seeking out survivors and listening to their life stories.

Hercule Florence
Le Nouveau Robinson

2017

French edition

(last copies available!)

Through a series of scientific contributions and archives, this publication recounts the extraordinary character that was Hercule Florence—an explorer, an inventor and an artist, considered one of the inventors of photography.

Gianfranco Baruchello, Michele Mari
Dreams

2017

English edition

In this publication, artist Gianfranco Baruchello and writer Michele Mari join forces to provide descriptions of their own dreams. Baruchello's illustrations and Mari's written notes unveil oneiric worlds made of symbols, recurring images, and obsessions, and address the question: just what are dreams made of?

Riccardo Giacconi
The Variational Status

2017

bilingual edition (English / French)

Artist and researcher Riccardo Giacconi investigates the relationship between a range of narrative forms (puppetry, street storytellers, flyers and pamphlets) and a series of pre-political acts of revolt staged between Italy and South America. This publication documents his research project and features a series of texts, notes, archives, illustrations, and interviews.

Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff
Berlin, Zürich, Zürich, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, London

2016

English edition

This publication collects black and white photographs taken at apartment viewings in Berlin, London and Zürich in 2015. The images render a landscape of apartments, mostly empty, punctuated by potential buyers or renters projecting their own possible futures onto the spaces.

Rä di Martino
The Day He Swims Thru Marrakech

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Photographic companion book to the film La controfigura (“The stand-in”) by Rä di Martino: the tale of a cinema troupe in Marrakech trying to shoot the remake of The Swimmer, the 1968 film with Burt Lancaster, based on a short story of the same name by John Cheever.

Emanuele Trevi, Giovanna Silva
Ontani in Bali

2016

English edition

Writer Emanuele Trevi and photographer Giovanna Silva recount, each in their own manner, their journey with artist Luigi Ontani in Bali at the time of the preparation of the Ogoh Ogoh carnival procession. With original illustrations by Ontani.

Gabriele Basilico
Marocco 1971

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Marocco 1971 offers an intimate, social, and aesthetical portrait of Morocco by Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico. Set during the Summer of 1971, the series also brings back the distinctive spirit of this era.

Luigi Comencini
Italia 1945-1948

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

50 black & white photographs of post-war Italy taken by director Luigi Comencini shortly before his debut behind the camera. With a series of writings establishing connections between his work as a photographer and his cinematographic oeuvre.

Ettore Favini
Arrivederci

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Arrivederci recalls the artist's personal journey in Sardinia to explore textile craftsmanship. Favini narrates the stories of each piece of fabric he gathered and used for his new body of work—from its origin to the exhibition display. The publication is enriched with photographic documentation and texts by curators and stylist Antonio Marras.

Donatella Bernardi
Into Your Solar Plexus

2016

English edition

This artist's book presents the sum of a multitude of journeys, people and stories collected and edited by Donatella Bernardi and stemming from her own family archives. The artist connects this whole documentation with works by Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair and her daughter Hala Schoukair, as well as with the Swiss Confederation Fine Art Collection.

Nanna Debois Buhl
Palm Tree Studies in South Tyrol and Beyond

2016

English edition

Botanical trajectories and symbolic dimensions of Merano's palm trees (artist's book).

Claudia Losi
How do I imagine being there?

2016

English edition

What language should be used to describe a place? This question is the starting point and the core question of Claudia Losi's project and namesake book, a collection of transversal contributions, from art to geography, from semiotics to psychology, which interrogates the way we perceive places and the role of our imagination in such a process.

Carlo Mollino
Giappone 1970

2016

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Carlo Mollino's photographs of a Japan in between tradition and modernity during the 1970 Universal Exposition.

Susan Philipsz
Follow Me

2015

English edition

Designed on the basis of a contemporary Baedeker, this book offers an original itinerary in the historic center of the city of Genoa. It is a city-guide that links different places and times, and that also moves from the habit of moving, investigated as a typical phenomenon of the Grand Tour—and that is the origin of the term “tourism”.

Carsten Höller
“Fara Fara” – A Film Not Made

2015

bilingual edition (English / French)

A photographic account of Carsten Höller's journeys to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the purpose of a film about Fara Fara music.

Antonio Rovaldi
Orizzonte in Italia

2015

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

Artist's book.

Gabriele Basilico
Iran 1970

2015

bilingual edition (English / Italian)

A photographic journey from Yugoslavia to Iran during the 1970's.

Alessandra Spranzi
Nello stesso momento / At the same time

2015

trilingual edition (English / French / Italian)

Artist's book dedicated to Alessandra Spranzi's beautiful eponymous series of photographic collages.

Invernomuto
Negus

2014

trilingual edition (English / German / Italian)

(last copies available!)

Artist's book based on a complex project linking Vernasca, Ethiopia and Jamaica according to two points of view, placing certain critical moments in Italy's colonial history in relation to the symbolism of Rastafarian tradition.