World War I could be called the ‘war of the camera’. While earlier conflicts were documented using photography, WWI represented a turning point in how the medium was applied and by whom. Both the Allied forces and the Central Powers employed official photos to spy, to provoke, and to persuade – a study in strategy, censorship, and the constant need to whip up public support for the cause. In sharp contrast, the importance of photography for personal use was undeniable. For soldiers and those left behind, studio portraits and photo albums created permanent records of lives that were suddenly placed at risk. Published on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI, this book brings together a diverse, remarkable selection of images that illustrates the beginning of photography’s inextricability from modern warfare.
While the foundations of the Josette and Jean-Claude Weill Collection lie in painting, their passion for seeking out exciting new forms soon led them to embrace the infinite diversity of tribal art. Expanded over the decades under the enthusiastic stewardship of their son Jean-Pierre, the collection now includes over 120 works of the very highest order, covering Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Several large categories can be discerned, reflecting the Weill family’s liking for daring, expressionistic forms: Dogon and Tellem statues combining geometric shapes with textured surfaces, as well as Kongo powerful figures endowed with magic properties. The expressive arts of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Melanesia are also well represented in the collection. Among the more classic works there are pieces that have iconic status – such as the Bena Lulua statue that used to belong to Jacques Kerchache, Edward Robinson’s Fang reliquary figure, or the Biwat powerful flute plug from the Lemaire Collection – that testify to the sureness of the Weill’s taste and to the shrewd instinct that led them to appreciate this art from another world. An important group of finely carved small ivories makes up one-third of the whole collection. This book will provide an opportunity to unveil the Parisian collection shrouded in mystery, whose importance is matched only by its confidentiality. In order to enable the reader to capture the full richness and diversity of its contents, the works are all accompanied by notes written by experts, including Viviane Baeke (Africa Museum, Tervuren), Philippe Dagen (historian and art critic), Jean-Paul Colleyn (anthropologist), Bertrand Goy (author specialising in the Ivory Coast), Hélène Joubert (Musée du Quai Branly-Jaques Chirac), Hélène Leloup (historian and antiquarian), Sean Mooney (the Rock Foundation), and Philippe Peltier (formerly at Musée du Quai Branly-Jaques Chirac).
The fashion, history, and development of Jewish dress tells a story that spans the globe and crosses many cultures. In this colourful volume, Jewish communities – particularly those established for centuries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa – are revealed through their garments. Stunning photographs spin tales of family traditions and religious devotion, with a special section dedicated to jewellery worn by brides and grooms. Superb photographs of specific garments, with many close-up details, are juxtaposed with rare contextual photographs from The Israel Museum’s archives to create a tapestry of a people revealed through textiles, costume, and images. More than 350 revelatory illustrations tell us how these precious articles of dress were originally worn.
A new kind of figurative art appeared during the 1960s in Europe and the United States. While in New York Pop Art offered a fresh perspective on an America in the throes of frenzied change, in Paris French painters and others from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Iceland also began exploiting images that had their origins in advertising, cinema and the popular press. Grouped under the umbrella term Narrative Figuration, they soon became the uncompromising critics of what was dubbed the consumer society. They were for the most part politically committed artists and many of them were actively involved in the political agitation that led up to the events of May 1968 in France. Once standard bearers, the Narrative Figuration artists have now been rediscovered by museums, which, like the Centre Pompidou, are dedicating increasing numbers of exhibitions to their work. Thanks to the acquisition of major works, the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art in Geneva now provides what is without doubt one of the most exhaustive selections of works by Adami, Aillaud, Arroyo, Erró, Fromanger, Jacquet, Klasen, Monory, Rancillac, Schlosser, Stämpfli, Télémaque and Voss, to name a few. Edited by Jean-Paul Ameline, who curated the Figuration narrative, Paris, 1960-1972 exhibition, held at the Grand Palais in 2008, this catalogue includes all its key works, with commentary and analysis by curators and art historians specialising in a movement that left an indelible mark on 1960s Europe.
The study of fifteenth-century painting in France was inaugurated a century ago by the exhibition Primitifs français (1904) and has developed considerably over the past few decades, especially thanks to the work of Charles Sterling, Michel Laclotte, Nicole Reynaud, and François Avril. This research has led to the revival of several forgotten figures (Barthélemy d Eyck, André d Ypres, Antoine de Lonhy, Jean Hey, Jean Poyer, etc.) and the reassessment of many centres of artistic production. Linked together, they formed a crucial part of the trade network across Europe. It is this extremely complex artistic geography that this book’s three sections attempt to recreate. The first is devoted to the interplay between the French courts and Paris, as a thriving centre of artistic production at the time of the flowering of international gothic (1380-1435). The second examines the spread of ars nova (the illusionist art of Flanders) and its selective adoption in the kingdom of France in the time of Charles VII and Louis XI (1435 1483). The third concentrates on the gradual development of a generally accepted standard form of the French language, based on the model of Jean Fouquet and evolving in parallel to the work of the grand rhetoricians under Charles VIII and Louis XII (1483-1515).
In the years 1945-1963, Jean Dubuffet set about documenting his collection of Art Brut. He had the pieces photographed by recognised photographers on the Paris art scene, including Henry Bonhotal and Emile Savitry. But he also had pieces photographed that were not in his own collection, including works that interested him because, like Art Brut, they were marginal to the official art world. These notably include works of popular and naïve art, children’s drawings, tattoos, graffiti photographed by Brassaï and graphic works from the Solomon Islands. Dubuffet arranged these photographs of artworks by over a hundred artists – including Gaston Chaissac, Aloïse Corbaz, Joseph Crépin, Auguste Forestier, Somuk and Adolf Wölfli as well as anonymous artists – in extraordinary sequences contained in 14 albums (755 pages in total). These have been preserved since 1976 in the archives of the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne. Classified by artist, the images document paintings, drawings, embroideries, sculptures and collages. In assembling this image bank in the years 1945-1963, Dubuffet set up a dialogue between highly diverse forms of expression of his period, all of which flowered away from the more familiar terrains of art history and culture. This facsimile edition of the Photographic Albums of Jean Dubuffet is combined with a booklet of essays by specialists: preface by Sarah Lombardi, Director of the Collection de l’Art Brut and essays by Baptiste Brun, Nicolas Garnier, Karoline Lewandowska, Jean-Hubert Martin, Jérôme Pierrat and Michel Thévoz. Text in English and French.
One of the first people in Europe to consider the gifts which the Aztec ruler Montezuma gave to Hérnan Cortés as works of art was Albrecht Dürer: ‘Nothing I have yet seen has given me such joy as the objects brought to the king from the new gold countries […] Some pieces display an extraordinary skill; I have been astonished by the ingenuity of the inhabitants of those far distant lands,’ he wrote. It was 1520 and those works had been sent to Brussels.
The five centuries that have passed since the beauty of these objects was first noticed seem not to have been enough for the ancient cultures of Latin America to be fully understood. This catalogue of pre-Columbian art is a fresh attempt to examine and come to terms with artworks produced by a section of mankind that came to the attention of Europeans only after the voyages of Columbus and other explorers. It illustrates the collection of pre-Columbian art of Giancarlo and Inti Ligabue, one of the few collections of its kind in Italian hands: over 150 pieces from Mesoamerica and South America, an extraordinary corpus of objects which give testament to the excellence achieved by ancient artists. But it also tells the story of certain rare objects which belonged to the Medici Collection, one of Europe’s greatest treasures. Among these are two atlatls, spear-throwers covered in gold-leaf from the Aztec or Mixtec cultures, a Taíno necklace dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and a Teotihuacan stone mask. These objects are accompanied by pieces from private European collections and a number of significant artworks from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.
Essays by leading scholars and archaeologists, such as C. Phillips, C.F. Baudez, J.M. Hoppan, J.J. Leyenard, F. Kauffmann Doig, C. Cavatrunci, D. Domenica, and M. Polia, weave both scientific and humanistic interpretations of Amerindian thought. The Giancarlo and Inti Ligabue Collection of masterpieces of ancient Latin American cultures is part of a huge and broad-ranging hoard of objects gathered over a period of almost fifty years.
A wonderland of sky, water, grass, and birdsong, the Iberá marshlands of Corrientes Province are the preeminent wildlife habitat in Argentina and a globally important natural treasure. Esteros del Iberá, a landmark volume celebrating a peerless place, invites the reader to experience this spectacle of nature. One of the largest freshwater wetlands in South America, comprising more than 2.5 million acres, the Iberá was forged from ancient geological forces and the long-ago wanderings of the mighty Paraná River. Today the landscape is a locus of conservation activity including a campaign to create a new national park to protect the biodiversity of this striking region. Increasingly a destination for nature lovers, the marshlands attract birdwatchers from across the Earth, who come to see some 360 avian species that are found here. A native son of Corrientes, world-class nature photographer Juan Ramón Díaz Colodrero has spent years documenting the region’s birdlife and other wild creatures. In Esteros del Iberá, his dazzling images put the reader into the heart of the Iberá’s life-affirming beauty. Supporting essays by leading regional conservationists and other experts illuminate the Iberá’s diverse natural communities and distinctive human culture. While the area is remarkably unspoiled, innovative conservation projects are augmenting wildlife populations and returning missing native species such as the giant anteater and the jaguar to their rightful homes in the landscape of shining waters. The Iberá presents a stark contrast to the modern world, a place where the trajectory of land health is moving toward integrity and wildness. Text in Spanish.
The Baptistery of San Giovanni is not only one of the most magnificent monuments in all Italy, but also a splendid anthology of great Florentine art in marble and stone, in mosaic and bronze, and the emblem of the religious and political ideals of Florence.
Mirabilia Italiæ is a unique series. It owes its existence to an innovative and ambitious project: an atlas of the great monuments of Italy that will display them in all their details, from the best known to the least. This series represents a completely new way of documenting art. Mirabilia Italiæ provides a guided tour of each monument, fully and accurately explained. Each atlas contains hundreds of colour photographs, arranged in a precise topographical sequence and accompanied by diagrams showing the exact location of each detail. The atlas is complemented by a volume of texts edited by the premier scholars in the field, consisting of critical essays and descriptive notes. Essays examine the monument from the art-historical point of view, and record the alterations it has undergone over time. Descriptive notes analyse the content and significance of the images. Extensive cross-references link the essays and notes to the images, facilitating consultation of the work. The General Editor of Mirabilia Italiæ is Salvatore Settis, Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.
Text in English and Italian.
An extraordinary witness to religious faith, the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi is one of the great monuments of Italy, a treasure trove of masterpieces by great painters such Cimabue, Giotto, Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti. The book illustrates the entire artistic patrimony of the Basilica, showing the frescoes that were damaged or destroyed during the 1997 earthquake, both in their original condition and as they now appear after restoration. Texts by G. Bonsanti, M.M. Donato, G.B. Fidanza, A. Franci, A. Iacuzzi, P. Magro, F. Martin, L. Meoni, P. Mercurelli Salati, A. Monciatti, E. Neri Lusanna, R.P. Novello, G. Rocchi Coopmans de Yoldi, G. Ruf, G. Sapori. Photographs by E. and S. Ciol, G. Roli, G. Ruf Text in Italian. Mirabilia Italiæ is a unique series. It owes its existence to an innovative and ambitious project: an atlas of the great monuments of Italy that will display them in all their details, from the best known to the least. This series represents a completely new way of documenting art. Mirabilia Italiæ provides a guided tour of each monument, fully and accurately explained. Each atlas contains hundreds of colour photographs, arranged in a precise topographical sequence and accompanied by diagrams showing the exact location of each detail. The atlas is complemented by a volume of texts edited by the premier scholars in the field, consisting of critical essays and descriptive notes. Essays examine the monument from the art-historical point of view, and record the alterations it has undergone over time. Descriptive notes analyse the content and significance of the images. Extensive cross-references link the essays and notes to the images, facilitating consultation of the work. The General Editor of Mirabilia Italiæ is Salvatore Settis, Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Firm sale only.
Luca Blast Forlani leads the reader through a range of urban spaces, places that, notwithstanding passing of time, have still retained their own identity. Although on the surface apparently empty and desolate, they each have a history and a story to tell; the details of identity caught in the lens, the clues of a life discarded but not entirely forgotten. These images are poignant, emotive and thought-provoking; the use of light and shadows, close-up details and wide-angle shots, footprints of the past, captured in the silence and the dust, like a long-forgotten conversation, a whisper of lives remembered. Text in English and Italian.
John Cage: The Zen Ox-Herding Pictures brings together fifty never-before-seen watercolour images from renowned artist and composer John Cage, revealing the powerful influence of Zen in his life and work. These pieces were originally created on paper towels at the 1988 Mountain Lake Workshop as Cage experimented with the flow and tone of colours from his brush as he prepared for larger works. Authors Stephen Addiss and Ray Kass unite them here in patterns both planned and dictated by chance, the same methods by which Cage himself composed his later works. Ray Kass and Stephen Addiss provide introductory essays, discussing their experience with the works and the artist himself. They also explore fragments of Cage’s poetry and his many statements about Zen practice, providing a fascinating lens through which the images seem to become mysterious echoes of the centuries-old “Ten Ox-Herding Paintings”-images about searching for, finding, and returning from the path to enlightenment.
Photographer Jasper Léonard previously resized Antwerp and New York and now points his special tilt-shift lenses towards Amsterdam. Amsterdam Resized shows you the city like you’ve never seen it before: the famous canals of Amsterdam have been reduced to mere trickles with mini-sized bridges; the joggers in the Vondelpark now resemble Playmobil puppets, and the Stedelijk Museum now looks more like a bath tub. A new book in the Resized series, which has been a huge success in the US with articles in, among others, USA Today and the New York Post. International press has heaped praise on the Resized series: “The book is an intimate and magical token of admiration.” – The Sydney Morning Herald Also available: Antwerp Resized ISBN: 9789401432702 Belgium Resized ISBN: 9789401434614 New York Resized ISBN: 9789401443395
Text in English and Dutch.
Urban highways are unique windows from which to grasp a city’s identity. They can however be responsible for the fragmentation of cities and the degradation of their adjacent living environments. As many urban highways are aging, concerns about their redevelopment, upgrading or dismantling are emerging in many cities of the World. By examining the meaning as well as the opportunities offered by urban gateway corridors, the book attempts to offer a unique perspective on issues related this emerging landscape and transportation issue. More specifically, the book aims to describe the innovative approach to landscape infrastructure planning that was used for the YUL-MTL: Moving Landscapes initiative held in Montreal. Over two years, this initiative combined a design competition and a workshop with collaborative efforts between 20 public agencies to rethink a 17 km stretch of Montreal’s Autoroute 20 gateway corridor. Linking the downtown area to Montreal-Trudeau international airport, the corridor is mainly composed of transport infrastructures and industrial wastelands in dire need of revitalisation along with residential areas. The book presents the collaborative process behind the development of a strategic vision for the area, exposes the winning entries of the competition and describes the subsequent steps that resulted in an ‘atlas of possibilities’ for the future of the area. It provides a broad overview of the main challenges facing any project leader who wishes to gather a wide range of stakeholders towards a common goal: building a shared consensus over the prospective development of large-scale infrastructure projects. It also provides the reader with a diversity of actions and solutions to improve the landscape of transportation corridors and their integration within their surrounding environment. Hence, as the book details the local context of Montreal’s infrastructural landscapes, it also offers insights and ideas to improve urban highway integration for cities worldwide. Throughout the book, the permanent bond between cities and infrastructures is not only explored through the lens of landscape preservation but also landscape enhancement and development. This three-pronged approach offers a strategy based on the exploration of gateway corridor landscapes for what they are but also for what they could and should be. As the collaborative process allowed for clarifying the local stakeholders standpoint, the design exercises (ideas competition and workshop) were used as tools to improve the outcomes on the latters. The contribution of the designers particularly helped materializing the strategic framework that resulted from the collaborative process through the addition of design guidelines. Overall, the book shows how the consideration of the landscape when it comes to development projects offers not only a rich contextual knowledge from a transversal and multidisciplinary perspective but also becomes a vector for the coherent planning of infrastructures and their integration within adjacent territories and within the city.
Joy Ride is a simple book on the surface. A collection of renowned architect-come-artist David C. Martin’s sketches, watercolours, photography, and observations, as recorded over an extensive cross-Mexico sojourn, it has all the aesthetic gaiety and lightheartedness of a typical travelogue. However, there is something deeper at work. Martin’s multi-media evocation of Mexican scenery and buildings speaks to his extensive experience in art and architecture, and this book will be of mutual interest to students of both – as well as those who want to explore Mexico through the eyes of a truly unique traveller. Innovative, fresh, and evocative, this book will take you on the ‘Joy Ride’ that its title promises.
From the stone blade and the fire stick to the latest algorithms of genetic code, we shape our world through the act of design. With its roots in the Renaissance notion disegno, design is the ability not only to make something, but also to conceive of its invention and reflect on its meaning. Whether we valorise it as the democratisation of design or critique it as the perversion of the commodity fetish, designed things are now ubiquitous. Not only things but entire systems must now be designed and objects reconceived and redesigned as mere moments in unfathomably complex ecological flows. The planet itself, and even space beyond, is now presented as a design problem. What does landscape architecture bring to the broader culture of design? What lessons can be learned from other disciplines at the cutting edge of design? What role does design play in a time of transformative technological change? In LA+ Design we move beyond the designed outcome to explore the myths, methods, meanings, and futures of design. Engineer and physicist Adrian Bejan outlines his constructal theory, which predicts natural design and its evolution in engineering, scientific, and social systems. Design researchers Craig Bremner + Paul Rodgers take us through an A Z of design ecology. Architects Lizzie Yarina + Claudia Bode open our eyes to new ways of seeing things through subject-object relations. Jenni Zell explores life as a woman landscape architect through a Kafkaesque lens. Daniel Pittman interviews MoMA’s curator of architecture and design, Paola Antonelli. Architect David Salomon explores methods of using data as both fact and fiction. Christopher Marcinkoski interviews Anthony Dunne + Fiona Raby (Dunne + Raby) to discuss how their practice continuously redefines the role of design in society. Thomas Oles challenges stereotypes of landscape architecture s professional identity. Richard Weller discusses the terrarium as the ultimate design experiment. Dane Carlson goes deep into the culture of Nepal s hinterlands to explore new modes and geographies for landscape architecture beyond the first world. Through LA’s signage, anthropologist Keith Murphy shows how different groups of people interact with and give meaning to the landscapes they inhabit. Interviewed by Colin Curley, architect Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation) discusses the role of technology and agency of architecture in society today. Game designer Colleen Macklin shows how public space can be redefined and subverted through the agency of play. Javier Arpa interviews urban design guru Winy Maas (MVRDV, The Why Factory) to discuss his views on the future of design and design education. Experimental psychologist Thomas Jacobsen describes current neurological research into the subjectivity of beauty. Landscape architect James Corner talks about the evolution of the profession of landscape architecture in a wide-ranging interview.
MASTERcrit was inaugurated in 2015 as a hybrid series of events that encompassed lectures, critiques and a charrette. Modelled on the traditional notion of a ‘Master Class’ the workshop enlisted the best graduating students from the school as nominated by the faculty to work in an intensive pedagogic setting with a world-class practitioner. The so-called invited ‘MASTERcritics’ were MOS in 2015, Andrew Zago in 2016, and Jürgen Mayer H. in 2017. In all cases, these architects were tasked with presenting a project brief to the team, which reflected a current pre-occupation in their own discursive production. Students in turn were asked to produce artefacts that manifested their responses. In addition to documentation of the workshops and resultant work, the book includes the briefs and transcripts of conversations.
Thomas R. Schiff’s vivid panoramic photographs capture the iconic buildings and landscapes of San Francisco and the Bay Area in new and surprising ways. From the Golden Gate Bridge to Coit Tower, they offer a refreshing perspective on familiar places and reveal unexpected treasures in everyday ones. With essays on photography, perception, and architecture by Susan Ehrens, Wendy Lesser, and Tim Culvahouse, and an author interview by Dave Christensen, The Poetics of Distortion: Panoramic Photographs of the San Francisco Bay Area is a mind-bending, eye-opening, very San Franciscan journey.
Return on Experience will be comfortable on the shelves of designers and artists and equally comfortable for business leaders and educators. It reflects the fundamental belief that design is integral to everything we do. That all human existence has been a result of a progression of successful design outcomes. It is not in the sense that what we have created is exclusively logical and rational but true success has been the result of sort of emotional intelligence and meaning being infused into a new form that has caused us to progress as a species. Inspiration and innovation are difficult to process from a pure logic as it requires a broader view into the way we think and feel things. It is deeply personal and at the same time shared at a social level. In this sense we naturally view design as possessing enormous value and is an essential part of culture with a broad value and application.
Design is a dialogue. This book is not a treatise on do’s and don’ts of design or business. It is a reflection on the nature of how to see design. Design is and always has been part of a conversation. As such, this book captures a dialogue that author, Tim Kobe has been engaged in for over 25 years at Eight Inc. This conversation is more than a single path but reflects the dialogue and practice of business leaders, designers, colleagues, and collaborators. This book would not exist without those on the other side of the conversation and is more than a lens of a single or individual point of view. Eight Inc. has been incredibly fortunate to design with some of the most successful people and companies that exist today and much of Eight Inc.’s success has been attributed to our time with Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs.
The Urban Design Legacy of Colin Rowe describes the ideas developed and described primarily by Colin Rowe, professor of architecture and head of the Urban Design Studio at Cornell, and additionally by his students, his co-authors, and colleagues throughout the course of the last half of his highly influential career spanning the years 1963 till his death in 1999. From the simplest of techniques regularly used in present day planning, urban design, and architectural analysis and design work to the philosophical and aesthetic ideas related to them, these techniques and ideas inform much of current discussion about the appropriate forms of human settlement, sustainability, and even architectural style.
Colin Rowe is acknowledged to be the most influential figure in architectural theory in the last half of the 20th century. Although his contribution to the discipline and practice of urban design is equally important, there is no single text which specifically focuses on his work in this sphere. This book intends to address this omission by critically examining Rowe’s urban design theory and its evolution, which began at the Cornell University Urban Design program in 1963 and continued until his death in 1999. The text features a score of previously unpublished essays by prominent scholars, educators and practitioners, many of whom were his students or close collaborators. The Urban Design Legacy of Colin Rowe provides a window to explore past, present and future themes central to the discipline of urban design as seen through the critical lens of Colin Rowe and those who continue to define their creative work in relationship to that extraordinary intellect.
Aldo Rossi (1931-97) is a key figure in 20th-century architecture. Discarding utopian pretences, his work claimed the autonomy of architecture with formal restraint, and remains highly influential both in theory and practice until the present day. In this new book, Diogo Seixas Lopes looks at Rossi’s work through the lens of a term often used to describe the great architect’s work: melancholy. While the influence of melancholy on literature and visual arts has been debated extensively, its presence in architecture has been largely overlooked. By exploring Rossi’s entire career, Lopes traces out the oscillation between enthusiasm and disenchantment that marks Rossi’s oeuvre. Through a close exploration of one of his landmark works, the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena, Lopes shows how this brilliant, innovative architect reinterpreted a typology of the past to help us come to terms with representations of death and the melancholy that inevitably accompanies it. Beautifully illustrated and drawing on rich archival sources, Melancholy and Architecture both illuminates the work of the 20th century’s most interesting architects and offers a new perspective on the long cultural history of melancholy.
Flowers are a perennially popular motif throughout art history. And for good reason: lush with texture and colour, a living bouquet of blooms can be made to communicate much through the masterly brushstrokes of Vincent Van Gogh or Georgia O’Keeffe, in the hands of a skilled ikebana artist, or through the lens of contemporary photography. For more than two decades, Swiss photographer Anna Halm Schudel has focused her eye on flowers, zooming in on calyxes, pistils, and leaf veins to create exuberant feasts of colours. While celebrating the wide variety of shapes and sizes that nature and human cultivation have brought us, Schudel is no less fascinated by the process of decay. As the flowers fade, wilt, and wither, she transforms them under water into images of strange, compelling beauty, to combine their delicate beauty with a stirring memento mori. Eighty strikingly beautiful colour plates are complemented by two essays that examine Schudel’s symbolism and put her work in context with the history of the floral still life. As exquisite as the subject itself, this beautifully designed large book is sure to inspire appreciation for this rising Swiss artist.
Text in English and German.
Italian photographer Gian Paolo Barbieri is renowned for his work in the field of fashion and for his sensitivity towards beauty. He had the chance to travel a lot, shooting unique places and extraordinary people, along with his greatest passion: flowers. Over the years he gathered an exceptional collection of photographs, only partially exhibited on some occasions. Very few know about the personal life of Gian Paolo, who decided to keep it to himself. A chapter in his private sphere regards his relationship with Evar, a young architect and model from Bergamo who was killed in a motorcycle accident 24 years ago. Flowers of My Life tells their love story through the pictures of flowers and the portraits of Evar captured by Barbieri’s lens, together with poems written by Branislav Jankic.
Personal and private outdoor space is becoming ever-more elusive as urban areas become more crowded due to population growth and increasing development. Urban Oasis: Tranquil Outdoor Spaces at Home explores projects from London to New York and Sydney to San Francisco that reveal inspirational designs of rooftops, garden spaces, outdoor rooms, terraces and courtyards, and provide refuge from the modern world with private pockets of paradise. These outdoor spaces provide relaxing, sociable, and plant-filled settings for residents to savor peace and calm, and the company of family and friends.