Mysterious and austere, Italia O Italia metaphysical cities hide the enigma of a timeless place between sunburst dead-ends and shadowy arcades; the disquieting muses of Federico Clavarino shape an Italy of the mind, made of dark symbols in sunlit piazzas.
A kind of stillness permeates every photograph of this book, transforming what is portrayed in an apparently uninhabited space.
Yet all of these fragments are imbued with humanity, that can be found hidden in the invisible piece of a scenery, in the gesture of a hand,
in the segment of a column or in the disjointed movement of a person: humanity is present here up to the very last stone.
These flaws in everyday reality, that appear when time is put on hold by the camera, end up revealing the individuality of a place that looks as if it were waiting for a new start,or rather for a different destiny.
Italia O Italia is an artist book published by Akinabooks as it was originally conceived by Federico Clavarino,
which highly symbolic photographic language weaves a multi-layered tale of a country which ancient ruins cast shadows on the shards of a broken present.
Italia O Italias images has been scanned from original C-Prints printed in darkroom by the author himself, Federico Clavarino; pre-press specialist Victor Garrido worked with Federico and the printer at Grafica Palermo (Madrid) to achieve the best possible colour reproduction.
the author
Federico Clavarino was born in Turin, Italy, in 1984, where he studied literature and creative writing at Alessandro Bariccos Scuola Holden. He then moved to Madrid in 2007 and started studying documentary photography at BlankPaper Escuela (www.blankpaper.es), where he currently teaches.
Italia o Italia is Clavarinos third photobook, after La Vertigine (Fiesta Ediciones, 2010) and Ukraina Passport (Fiesta Ediciones, 2011).
Read Colin Pantalls review of Italia O Italia on Photoeye Blog.
