El pollo es un viejo amigo de los estudiantes de estadística. Ya saben: uno se come dos pollos, el otro ninguno; por lo tanto, hemos comido un pollo cada uno… Pero cuando pollo no hay, las estadísticas y sus engaños quedan literalmente en cero. El pollo es carne revolucionaria. Carne del orgullo patriótico. Es la única carne prevista por la canasta básica familiar, la llamada cuota, es decir, la lista de productos alimenticios a los que el ciudadano cubano debería tener derecho presentando en el mostrador del carnicero su libreta de abastecimiento, o sea la tarjeta de racionamiento, un cuadernillo muy parecido al que usted tiene en las manos, aunque con unas dimensiones  imilares a las del folleto dentro del bolsillo de la contraportada.
Pero pollo no hay. Hoy no hay. ¿Mañana? Quién sabe.
El carnicero se lo dirá con una sonrisa de resignada e irónica solidaridad. La misma que recibió Simone Bacci la primera mañana de su primera estancia en Cuba, en 2016, cuando, como italiano dependiente de la cafeína, pensó que para para desayunar con un buen café era suficiente bajar a la bodega y comprar un paquete. No, café no hay. […] Al cabo de unos días se acostumbró al mantra. Pero, sobre todo, empezó a ver esos estantes desolados, medio vacíos o completamente vacíos, donde a veces solo alguna etiqueta escrita a mano, como una especie de lápida a los caídos, habla de mercancías que quizá estuvieron allí alguna vez, pero ya no, no hay […]
No hay arroz, no hay harina, no hay nada, o casi nada. Para no hablar de las farmacias, donde el no hay, de condena al ayuno, se convierte en la angustia de no poder curarse.

(del texto introductorio de Michele Smargiassi)

“Was Marc Augé right when he wrote, speaking of travel photography, that “in order not to disappoint, reality shall resemble its image”? 
The authors of this exploration of the Triestine neighborhood of Rozzol Melara set out from a position of verification: did the image - not yet a photographic one - that the neighborhood suggested to them correspond to reality, or not? The first visual impact was intense for the two photographers from Emilia, Luca Setti and Giuliano Reggiani, during a visit to Trieste. The sheer monumentality of the architecture was striking, but even before taking a single photograph, a series of questions had already arisen. The neighborhood in which they would later decide to work for a couple of years had a relatively recent history. […]
The reputation of large housing estates marked by social problems or criminal control was well known, yet their curiosity and desire to explo¬re proved stronger than their initial concern. Reality, soon enough, reassured them. 

(from the text by Giovanna Calvenzi)

It is around grammar that Massimo Magistrini's work revolves, like the needle of a compass.
The very title of the book is entrusted to a preposition, In, which later becomes a prefix to introduce the internal sections. With a daring move, a simple particle takes on the task of deciphering a complex work, articulated in several series that, when considered as a whole, provide a precise vision of photography and the natural world.
Behind the camera, the author adopts the attentive gaze of the hiker who moves through minimal environments but knows how to imagine boundless realities, scrutinizing and consulting woods, herbs, wildflowers, moss, and ancient nautical maps. [...]
In-canto (TN: en-chantment) is the chapter that opens the book and transports us into the woodland dimension, into an archetypal place where exuberance and mystery dwell. It is the double exposure in-camera - not in post-production - that gathers them both, giving life to a process of sedimentation and transformation that alludes to the physiological and symbolic implications of forest regeneration.
In-colto (TN: un-tended), which follows, instead interprets the idea of a garden, a well-protected hortus conclusus, well guarded by the edges of the image and populated by common yet extraordinary specimens. Here, in addition to the double exposure that emphasizes various combinations of elementary botanical forms, it is the black and white that synthesizes the entire sequence, converting it into a gallery of sophisticated tapestries.
In-esplorato (TN: un-explored), lastly, contains two fantastic maps created with images of mosses and conifer leaves, to which a third map is added, built with details extrapolated from an ancient portolan chart. [...]
(Laura Manione)

Honey and Gall—two substances with opposing sensory profiles, often entwined in symbolic contrast. “Mel in ore [...] fel in corde” (honey in the mouth, gall in the heart), reads a medieval Latin proverb; “in corpo fiele, in bocca miele” (gall in the body, honey on the lips), wrote Pirandello in The Man, the Beast and the Virtue.

With this title, Iara Di Stefano invokes an ancient dualism to frame the narrative of a pivotal year - a turning point in her own life. The book unfolds through contrasting materials and shifting registers, creating a rhythm of fracture and recomposition. Yet from these apparent disruptions, a kind of organic unity emerges - almost biological in nature. The photographs act as surfaces upon which both sweetness and bitterness accumulate, like traces left behind by experience.

(from the presentation text by Laura Manione)

It was common in the 1960s, and perhaps even earlier, to rent out one’s home to vacationers who came to spend their holidays by the sea, in order to earn some extra money. Meanwhile, we would sleep in the garage, where we had managed to set up a bathroom.
The less fortunate made do in the shed.
Tourists would stay for the entire season, bringing the whole family along, including grandparents. Only the father sometimes had to return home to work — unlike today, when even managing a weekend away feels difficult.
My parents owned a haberdashery on the main avenue and didn’t have much time to look after me, so during the summer, I became the child of the tourists and a sibling to their children. I often ate with them and spent the whole day at the beach, making the most of the sun until it disappeared.
I remember that towards the end of the day, we would search for the last rays of sunlight to finish our sandcastles, as those giant concrete buildings cast long shadows.

(Silvio Canini)

A project that has received many awards:

• Winner of the InTarget Award and selected for an exhibition at the Photolux Festival, Lucca, Italy, 2024.
• Selected for the Lishui Photography Festival, Lishui, China, 2023.
• Winner of the Open Call and selected for The performing photobook exhibition, curated by Francesca Serravalle at the Format International Photography Festival, Derby, UK, 2023.
• Winner of the Open Call, juried by Paul D’Amato, and selected for the Back on the Shelf book exhibition, at Filter Photo, Chicago, USA, 2023.
• Winner of the International Open Submission and selected for the Photobook exhibition at the Belfast Photo Festival, Belfast, UK, 2022.

The title is: “A beautiful place”

To get to the heart of his story, Alessandro Mallamaci gives us two points of reference. The first is geographic: “The valley of the Sant’Agata river nestles in the red land of the Aspromonte mountains in the province of Reggio Calabria and flows towards the sea until it plunges into the Strait of Messina. The name of the waterway originates from the Greek aghatè, which is linked to concepts such as beauty, goodness and nobility; as if travellers from the Magna Graecia period had been enchanted by this place.” The second is sentimental, a kind of afterword to clarify the title of his work: “This is my landscape. I cannot help but love it. It is a beautiful place.” An unasked-for explanation which highlights, from the very first image, his deep bond, but also a conscious and painful one, for a beloved landscape.

Now the journey can begin. We are in Calabria, in the places where Mallamaci lives. Places which contrast sublime landscapes and building speculation, uncontaminated nature and nature corrupted by man and his stories, historic remains and industrial waste, popular traditions rich in charm and the rule of the ‘Ndrangheta. Contradictions, as he himself points out, are the leitmotiv of this area of Italy, and Mallamaci has been moving and working between these alternations for five years. He seeks the proper distance for his photography, one which allows a dialogue between details and wider visions, people and things, to build an itinerary which develops upwards and into which – almost a pause – horizontal visions are inserted.

(from the text by Giovanna Calvenzi)

There is an order in things, a right measure, a balance.
And if not, if chaos, dissarray were to regulate nature, society, up to the humanized landscape, then Paolo Ferrari’s gaze intervenes to find the matter in disorganized objectivity, the primordial substance for the creation of one’s own ordered world, one’s own cosmos. Just as ancient philosophers drew from sensorial data to discuss the world of the invisible, so in the author’s shots the collected reality comes to life and takes shape, transforming itself into a metaphor of animated, indeed humanized, everyday life, open to the gaze. Contemplation is therefore the starting point and the arrival point; the absence of excess determines a classic vision of elegance, serenity and balance. Consistently with this assumption, the attraction that the ordered cosmos exercises on man, by virtue of the beauty it expresses, has always been linked to the idea of eidos form, which coincides with the “thing seen”. And why not translate the concept into the “thing photographed”? The gaze sees, chooses, collects, stops time and creates space.
(from the text by Stefania Lasagni)

The shattering charm of a swing, a leap into the void, that vertigo like an inebriation which – averting me from the real world and the rational sphere – takes me to that suspended Middle Earth, to the edge of an imponderable abyss in whose darkness the whirlpool of life appears to me. It’s impossible to escape this game capable of awakening a sense of wonder, in a sort of monologue between me and myself, which investigates the many facets of the nature of things. Through shadows and reflections I realize that by removing myself from the things that surround me, I give them back their original dignity and, with it, also an autonomy from my attention, from my energy, which frees them and allows them to soar. The world becomes a mirror of my most hidden contents and my projections, in a completely unconscious and involuntary way. Windows as observation and dialogue points. Flights of flocks that arouse my imagination. Contexts aimed at making me listen to the extraordinary symphony of existence.
Paolo Ferrari’s book is written with photography as communication based on the transmission of authentic messages, faithful to the author’s being and impossible to enclose in the mere convention of speech.
(from the text by Daniela Bazzani)

Las imágenes de Giorgio Dellacasa, pertenecientes a la segunda generación de fotógrafos occidentales que arribó a la isla entre finales del siglo pasado y nuestros días –entre los que se encuentran Martin Parr y, sobre todo, Alex Webb– se inscriben plenamente en la denominada fotografía callejera, o eso podría parecer. Sin embargo, el condicional es obligado, ya que es preciso incluir ese instinto de viajero auténtico que mueve al ser humano a la comprensión y la inclusión, al tiempo que rehúye toda forma de depredación, incluida la depredación visual de la que a menudo está impregnada la fotografía callejera.
Así, en los breves textos autógrafos que acompañan el libro y lo transforman idealmente en una especie de cuaderno ilustrado y nos permiten adentrarnos en los entornos neurálgicos y periféricos de la capital de una manera no invasiva.Empezando por el título, en el que se habla de intercambio de miradas– se trata realmente de una conversación y no de un monólogo, con todos los matices que, aplicados a la gramática fotográfica, sugieren una conversación amistosa.

Las luces suaves o filtradas pulen los tonos e invitan a la intimidad; las amplias y nítidas zonas de sombra marcan quizá un silencio impenetrable, estableciendo un límite a nuestra presunción; la proximidad o distancia con los individuos, así como sus gestos, miden el espacio de interlocución y admiten distintos grados de confianza. Además, al estar presentes en varias imágenes, los encuadres semisubjetivos o «naturales», como los definía Luigi Ghirri, además de guiar la mirada, nuevamente actúan como elementos discursivos, ya que introducen breves pero agudos comentarios al diálogo.

En definitiva, Giorgio Dellacasa no habla de La Habana, habla con La Habana.

(desde la introducción de Laura Manione)