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:

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.

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.