books photography held the bank. It also featured. Under the arches of the Pavaglione, Bologna, those of noble library Zanichelli, where Carducci had a studio all by itself, are invaded by photographic covers.
“The photography books are beautiful, attractive, eye-catching, “says Romano Montroni, doyen of Italian booksellers,” and are not afraid of the Kindle … “.
Last bastions of bond paper. Refuge of the culture of book as a material object. Speaking of boom would be an exaggeration, it is still a niche that is worth one percent of publishing Italian, one thing to five titles a year (cookbooks are twice), but with the positive sign in sales.
A leading publisher in the field, contrast, even talk of a 40 percent increase last year. An unexpected phenomenon but now difficult to be underestimated: “The book of photography has been upgraded, not threatened, by the advent of digital publishing,” says John Peresson by the Research Department of the Italian publishers.
More still others “illustrated” , the photography book seems to have been demonstrated to be its reason for existence strong and hard to replace on the display reading dematerialized, a little ‘as children’s books. “The reflected light that falls on the page. The pleasure of the image as a tactile object. The feeling of seeing the work of an author exactly how he wanted it to be seen … “, lists Mario Peliti, photo editor of tradition and quality,” but be careful, it is not only strength of the book-the book fetish immaterial. Is there anything more. “
Happening in the history of technological revolutions: new average do not abolish the old, re-displace them. Li renew. The photo book was blessed by the digital revolution in many ways.
First: we are all photographers. O photographing, we say with a contraption in his pocket he can do photographs. From “media art” for amateurs with aesthetic ambitions, photography has become a mass practice, a new language of human relations. The statistical probability of a growing number of photographing take us taste and wants to learn more is high.
One thing offered by Denis Curti, neodirettore The Photographer : the photography exhibitions in Italy have been more than a thousand in 2013, with overwhelming trend to the increase of one-third per year. And the bookshops of museums and exhibitions are excellent springboards for sale.
Second, digital technology has lowered production costs. Today, a good quality photo book has a cover price slightly higher than last bestseller in hardcover. Publishers have more careful then found other ways to contain costs: the co-editions, for example.
Publishers of different countries, they will agree to produce the same book by pooling facilities of the illustrations and changing only the language of the texts and imprints. The language barrier is now demolished if Eighties giants such as Taschen or Phaidon invented the formula of the books in three languages (but swelled unnecessarily pages), it is now customary to print, even in Italy, directly and only books with English texts “The audience of photography is caught and permits it, the market becomes international and allows print runs high,” says Roberto Koch of contrast, “the next book of Sebastião Salgado, the coffee culture, we will do so, in 40 thousand copies “.
Third, thanks to digital technologies, >
The third way, ” disintermediated “ autonomous and self-managed, between book and exhibition. The cult book like this is Afronauts of the Spanish Cristina De Middel, published in 2012 in a thousand copies at 28 euro, now sold and exchanged on the Internet to over a thousand.
But the Italian Nicolo Degiorgis has done something similar with its Hidden Islam , survey of Muslim communities in the Northeast Italian: “Nobody believed me and I printed it alone. It is now in its third year, five thousand copies sold, and won the three most important European awards for the book “. From there, Degiorgis launched a small publishing house, Rorhof, who seems determined to push the boundaries of self-produced book.
Singular: self-edition does not seem to bother the big publishers, indeed. “They renew the public’s interest, experience,” praises Koch, who organized the space Form perhaps the first review of self-publishing photo Italian, followed by CIFA Bibbiena and European Photography in Reggio Emilia .
After all, the story of the photo book is always an interweaving of cultural industry and avant-garde experiments. And the Italian genius played good cards in this. Although often not done in Italy. In London, a genial goblin named Gigi Giannuzzi invented in 2003 Trolley Books (the name, by the cart that Gianni pushed at book fairs when he was employed by a major publisher) that in ten years, before the sudden death of the founder, baked books extrovert and brilliant.
In London, in the district of creative Dalston , another Italian, Bruno Ceschel, opened five years ago Self Publish, Be Happy , the online platform for copyright books became a club of photo-bibliophiles refined.
No wonder, then, if one of the key books of culture Photographic Italian, Kodachrome by Luigi Ghirri, unobtainable for years, was reprinted last year also in London by another enterprising publisher trendy, Michael Mack.
But the Italian scene is not so marginal. From his observatory, the prize Marco Bastianelli for the photo book (this year there will also be a special prize for books self-published), the President Elizabeth Portuguese is orttimista: “The photo book in Italy is in excellent health, and not only the books of the great authors but especially those of young authors, those who may start with self-produced books that often become laboratories for experimentation and innovation of photographic language.”
And if the photo book author is now an object of collectors and connoisseurs who are dedicated to other books (the trilogy The Photobook, A History Gerry Badger and Martin Parr) and magazines ( Photobook Review , newly budding dell’autorevolissima Aperture ), the Italian publishing traditional tries to intercept the new mass interest with books accessible, not specialized texts that cross writing, story and image.
Over the fence of the book and subsidized pre-purchased (the exhibition catalogs) is born again nonfiction quality, and also here with some satisfaction Patriotic: volumes as Photoshow Alessandra Mauro, designed in Italy by team International, are translated abroad, never happened before.
“It was a challenge, but we discovered that readers demanding of photography there,” sums up Walter Guadagnini, who just cared for Skira a choral history of photography in four ponderous volumes. Small publishers of good ideas like Ravenna Danilo Montanari, the Roman Postcart and bolognese Quinlan, with such difficulty, now boast catalogs of all respect of securities designed and not just published .
Do not sell short, only fifty shades of gray Salgado, or palettes exotic McCurry. On paper, the picture is still formidable.
[A version of this article appeared on The Republic March 27, 2015]
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