Gabriele Basilico (55s) - Hardcover

Bonami, Francesco

3.85

13 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714845671 ISBN 13: 9780714845678

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2005

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A fascinating introduction to the work of Gabriele Basilico (b. 1944), one of the most important European landscape photographers of our time. His work captures the city in its quiet, empty moments, almost as if some disaster had driven away the population – the buildings remain, lasting testaments to the society that created them. Basilico has extensively chronicled the lesser-known parts of his own native country as well as travelling widely throughout Northern Europe, bringing his Italian sensibility and melding it with the peculiarities of the Northern landscape.

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Review:

'The work of Italian Gabriele Basilico has a quality rare to architectural photography: you can revisit his images time and time again. ... beautiful ... I'd recommend this book to anyone who gets a thrill from looking at buildings. If its raining and you can't go outside, slip this out from under your pillow.' (Grand Designs)

Synopsis:

Gabriele Basilico (b.1944) is one of the most important Italian photographers. Coming from the long-established tradition of landscape art, his is an idiosyncratic representation of architecture and landscape. His photographs of cityscapes, residential buildings and factories seem to deny the presence of the artist and ask viewers to form their own conclusions about relationships between structures, and between structures and landscape. Stripping bare the urban context of any human activity, his work transcends mere instances and seeks to reveal the very essence of place and of our relationship with it. Basilico is one of the best-known 'documentary' photographers in Europe, he eschews the traditional picturesque forms of landscape imagery and turns his attention instead to the city and the industralized landscape photographed in black and white and with a precision and clarity that is almost alarming. An architect by training, his camera imposes discipline on the buildings it focuses on - he banishes human life to reveal the life of the building itself.

Basilico travels extensively and in-depth, often working with government bodies to catalogue the appearance of the urban landscape for posterity. Basilico travelled to Berlin in 1990, where he documented the gradual demolition of the Berlin Wall. In 1991 he worked in Beirut, capturing the life and remnants of a city after years of war had taken its toll. His work is a unique pictorial record of a particular time, he avoids romanticism yet manages to reveal the hidden rhythm and life of the modern urban environment.

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