Below growth, below politics, below exhaustion; Italy seems to
be sinking beneath itself, hit by a crisis far beyond sheer economics.
There is all the diversity of a country of countries, tied together
by a common plague – loneliness. A cultural blessing, a
social curse, a ticket to empathy.
ITALIANA is a descent through the unchartered, across irregular
byways and small-sized characters; the secondary geography of
an unglobalized country where modernity makes little sense.
The pleasantry and the slums; the squallor and the sacred; desolation
and poetry. Stylistically, ITALIANA aims to be a fundamentally
classic photography book. In times of easy seduction,
where audience and success have become synonyms, escaping
the language of spectacularization becomes an act of revolt.
There is a moving curiosity in these pictures and an affection towards
a country so well known – so unknown. ITALIANA aims to
make a step towards the European identity, not only the Italian
one, and towards a kind of photography – humanistic photography
– that derives from empathy for one another.
»In this book, there is no hierarchy. Its protagonists are all minor
characters, yet they are real. They move about in the depths of Italy,
in the provinces, off-season«
– from the text by Giulio Rimondi
»This voyage is a gentle lilt, a quiet music that meanders through
the night with joy. Nothing is definitive, if only for the fact that it
is photography we are talking about; what was experienced is
now definitively gone, and what remains are images that are engorged
with a strange temporality, impossible to locate on a calendar,
definitively impossible to date. Yet this is clearly today’s
Italy; and while there is no nostalgia, there is indeed an enormous
tenderness.«
– from the text by Christian Caujolle
Giulio Rimondi was born in Italy in 1984. He pursued classics studies,
receiving a Bachelor in Literature and History of Art. From
the very start of his career he combined art photography with socially
committed reporting, focusing in particular on Mediterranean
identity.
As photojournalist Rimondi has contributed to international publications
such as TIME, The New York Times-Lens, CNN, Le Monde,
National Geographic, Internazionale and Leica Fotografie International.
Furthermore, he has been awarded of the Lead Award
for still life photography, of the Iceberg Award for documentary,
of the Special Award for contemporary photography and of the
San Fedele Award for contemporary art.
