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.
Series:
 
The Aquarium is a Listening Glass
2024
English edition
forthcoming
The glass as a listening device.
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach - Project of a Historical Architecture
2024
English edition
The facsimile and English-language reprint of the volume published in 1721 by Austrian architect and historian Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, a historical and theoretical work covering all architectural periods and styles, from Stonehenge to Chinese imperial arches, which had a considerable influence throughout Europe.
Rebecca Moccia - Ministry of Loneliness
2024
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
An artistic reflection on the political and social structures that shape the emotional state of loneliness and its perception in contemporary society.
Carla Cerati - Milano 1963/1973
2023
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Photographer and writer Carla Cerati (1926-2016) captures the architectural, social and political upheavals of 1960-70s Milan.
Gae Aulenti - Cina 1974
2023
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
A series of astonishing photographs by the Italian architect and designer, discovering China at the end of the Cultural Revolution, between millenary traditions, openness to the world and forced modernization.
Aradhana Seth - Sadak - Hand painted street signs in India
2023
English edition
currently out of stock
Artist, photographer and filmmaker Aradhana Seth's photographic archive of painted signs in India: a visual itinerary through the historical-economic changes of Indian society over the years.
 Fosbury Architecture - Spaziale - Everyone belongs to everyone else / Ognuno appartiene a tutti gli altri
2023
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The volume "Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else" brings together the voices of all the protagonists involved in the Italian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Lisa Ponti - Io sono un disegno
2023
bilingual edition (French / Italian)
The monograph dedicated to Italian artist, editor, critic and writer Lisa Ponti (1922–2019), daughter of the famous architect and designer Gio Ponti, who spanned a number of moments of twentieth century culture, constantly involved with the leading names of the Italian and international art scene.
Michele Mari - Le copertine di Urania
2023
Italian edition
A journey through the history of the pioneering Italian science fiction magazine Urania since the early 1950s.
Francesco Paleari - Green gulfs and Panga Panga parquet / Golfi verdi e parquet Panga Panga - Milano San Felice
2023
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
A revisiting of the singular urban planning project of the residential district of Milano San Felice.
Paul Thek - Italian Hours
2023
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
currently out of stock
A collection of works reflecting the influence of Italy on Paul Thek's artistic trajectory, with several contributions highlighting his Italian period.
Rä di Martino - Carmelo Bene - Là dove muore, canta
2023
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Carmelo Bene. Là dove muore, canta is the work of the artist Rä di Martino and she comes to terms with the memory of Carmelo Bene (1937–2002), through his archive materials.
Cy Twombly - Marocco 1952/1953
2023
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
currently out of stock
The photographs made by Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg in Morocco in the 1950s.
Alexis de Tocqueville - Viaggio in America - Stati Uniti e Canada 1831-32
2023
Italian edition
Tocqueville's travel notes, enriched by a photo essay by Ramak Fazel.
 Civil Architecture - Foreign Architecture / Domestic Policy
2022
English edition
A project by architects Hamed Bukhamseen and Ali Karimi questioning geopolitical strategies related to the development of Kuwait's global oil distribution.
Enrico Peressutti - URSS 1941
2022
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The photographs and drawings, mostly unpublished, made by the Italian architect back from the Russian front in 1941.
 Invernomuto - Black Med
2022
English edition
The long term project of the Italian artistic duo around the trajectories of sound through the Mediterranean sea.
Michael Höpfner - From Here to Tibet - A conversation between two walking artists. March 2019 – July 2020
2022
English edition
Fulton and Höpfner's long-term correspondence on art, landscape, and the aesthetic and political dimensions of walking.
Francesco M. Cataluccio - Non c\'è nessuna Itaca - Viaggio in Lituania
2022
Italian edition
The return to Lithuania of Francesco Cataluccio.
 Space Caviar - Dixit Algorizmi - The Garden of Knowledge
2022
English edition
Dixit Algorizmi. The Garden of Knowledge sets out to question the origin myths and narratives surrounding modern technologies, using the lens of contemporary artistic practices to explore their forgotten roots and overlooked resonances with distant places, times and cultures (catalogue of the Uzbekistan's pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, 2022).
Tiane Doan na Champassak - Indo-Chine
2022
bilingual edition (English / French)
The photographic works of the artist Tiane Doan na Champassak's grandmother, Alsatian married to a Vietnamese in Baden Baden in 1913.
Jacopo Valentini - Concerning Dante - Autonomous Cell
2022
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
A Dantean geography.
Editorial - An Exhibition in Words
2022
English edition
Ten contemporary Italian writers dialogue with the works displayed in the exhibition inaugurating Luca Lo Pinto's program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.
Marco Sammicheli - Danish Diaries
2022
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
A singular history of cultural encounters between Italy and Denmark.
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli - A Season in Slemani
2021
English edition
A series of artistic residencies in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Ludovico Quaroni - Roma 1968
2021
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The architect's photographic view of his native Rome.
Gustave Flaubert - Lettere dall\'Egitto
2021
Italian edition
The Italian edition of Flaubert's account of his trip to Egypt, illustrated by Nathalie du Pasquier.
Mahalla - The Survey (box set)
2021
English edition
Mahalla – The Survey offers a scientific investigation and an artistic statement which aims at a critical reading and a tentative exploration of a fascinating Uzbek cultural heritage: the mahalla (luxury box set including numerous documents, a 7" vinyl record by Carlos Casas and exclusive art prints by Bas Princen).
Gabriele Basilico - Non recensiti
2021
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Gabriele Basilico's previoulsy unpublished photographs in the strip-tease theaters and nightclubs of Milan in the 1970s reveal a new dimension of his oeuvre.
Paolo Monti - Procida 1972
2021
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The architectural images of the famous photographer on the island of Procida off Naples in 1972, presented for the first time.
Giorgio Andreotta Calò - Gloria
2021
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The text and photo diary of a forty-day journey on foot from Venice to L'Aquila, following the subterranean fracture where the European and African tectonic plates meet, in search of the symbolic dimension and the real effects of seismic waves.
Josef Albers - Messico 1935/1956
2021
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
currently out of stock
Unpublished photographs taken by Josef Albers during his travels to Mexico with Anni in the 1930s and 50s.
Louis De Belle - Cartographies
2021
English edition
currently out of stock
A photographic series that portrays details of the clothes of passers-by glimpsed along the streets of Manhattan (artist's book).
Giovanna Silva - Togliatti - The FIAT Factory
2021
Italian edition
A look back at social and intimate history of the automotive industry in the 1960s and 1970s, between the USSR and Italy.
Carlos Casas - Cemetery - Journeys to the Elephant Graveyard and Beyond
2021
English edition
Cemetery. Journeys to the Elephant Graveyard and Beyond compiles a selection of the visual and research materials accumulated during the development of the film and project Cemetery (2009–2019).
Nino Migliori - Gente del Delta 1958
2021
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The early work of the doyen of Italian photography paint a striking portrait of Italy in the 1950s.
Nanna Debois Buhl - Cloud Behavior
2020
English edition
currently out of stock
A study of clouds through photographs, drawings, essays, and interviews.
Enzo Mari - Falce e martello / The Hammer and Sickle
2020
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The expanded anastatic reprint of the Italian designer's sulphurous catalog of 1973.
Nathalie du Pasquier - Campo di Marte
2020
English edition
currently out of stock
Artist's book.
Michele Lombardelli - California
2020
English edition
A collection of photographs and drawings retracing the founding Californian experience of the artist.
Federico Patellani - Stromboli 1949
2020
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
In the spring of 1949, while they were shooting “Stromboli” on the island of the same name, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini began a love affair which was to cause a scandal. The great photographer Federico Patellani documented the development of the film as well as life on the island.
Daniela Comani - Planet Earth - 21st Century
2020
trilingual edition (English / German / Italian)
A collection of 360 postcards of cities from all around the world, made with screenshots from 3D software Apple Maps and Google Earth.
Jonas Mekas - Transcript 04 44\' 14\
2020
bilingual edition (English / Lithuanian)
Full transcript of Mekas's Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR: a five-hour-long film made up of footage from US television newscasts covering the independence of Lithuania and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Fog Friend Font - Ways of Doing Multilingual Sense (box set)
2020
English edition (texts in Inuktitut and other languages)
Box set comprising five books, a vinyl and a supplementary dust jacket, each highlighting different practices and transformative developments occurring in the realm of writing and speaking today as triggered by digital communication.
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”).
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