Travelling. Five books to explore cities and landscapes

1. The emersion of the city    
Gabriele Basilico is certainly one of the most examined and published photographers, and his photography, while not being purely “travel”, can certainly be described as one big adventure through the cities and the architecture of the world. However, in this case, the elegant Milanese publishing house Humboldt is proposing a true rarity, the result of a journey not only through a city, but also towards a new point of view. Glasgow 1969 is in fact the visual account of the first true traceable photographic work by Basilico, who in that year was still a student of architecture in Milan. The images captured in Glasgow with his Nikon F come from a single roll – naturally in black and white, and amazingly used without test shots – which, as Giovanna Calvenzi explains in the text, “represents the moment in which he became a photographer”. The photographs thus show a side to Glasgow, and above all also to Gabriele Basilico, which has never been seen before: Scottish urchins and street tales captured by an eye which was attentive to social matters, but also enraptured by a powerful post-industrial city which emerges forcefully from the background. The 72 pages enrapture, taking the reader on a journey which is not restricted either to space or time. 

2. A journey on Mount Analogue
Among the most interesting Italian photographers focusing on the changeable aspect of the landscape, Nicolò Degiorgis re-interprets the icon of the mountain in an anti-picturesque key, bringing together, in an elegant volume, a series of shots taken on the Dolomites and initially published in 2014 as a fanzine. The book originates from a reflection on the natural dualism and the constant alternating of the two most essential portions of the mountains: the apex and the nadir. To great effect, the project blends photographic and printing qualities. By folding double-sided prints, each is transformed into an “ideal” mountain without position, formed by two separate peaks, which unite to form a cycle - from night to day, from summer to winter and vide versa. A finalist in the 2017 Lucie Photo Book Prize and exhibited at the Museion in Bolzano, at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin and at the Macro in Rome, Peak seems to visually re-evoke the metaphysical nature of Alpinism presented by Mount Analogue, the cult book written by René Daumal in 1952.

3. Istantanee del mondo
Twenty-five years on from The act of seeing - a book on visual culture which has the power to profoundly condition the architectural and urban image of Europe at the end of the twentieth century –, Wim Wenders publishes a photographic road movie which brings together a large selection from the hundreds of black and white and colour shots taken around the world between the 1970s and 80s. Images stolen from time with his little Polaroid SX70 during the filming of a number of the director’s iconic productions: Summer in the city, The wrong move, Alice in the cities, The American friend, Hammet, The Scarlett letter, Tokyo-Ga, and King of the road. What emerges is a kind of single syncopated film made up of 403 isolated and precious frames (each an unreproducible shot, a condition imposed by the nature of the instrument, a limitation which can become virtuosity), which explores faces and cities, landscapes and horizons. Accompanied by 36 accounts by the author himself, “instant stories” which focus on minute details, the book can be read as a diary of a life, but also as a new and precious lesson in design.  

4. The writing of the landscape
Lars Müller brings together for the first time, in a precious book curated by Gareth Doherty – Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design –, an extensive collection of the large number of theoretical contributions written over the years by the Brazilian painter and botanist Robert Burle Marx (1909 - 1994), a central figure in the history of landscape architecture. Accompanied by the photographs of Leonard Finotti, the words of Burle Marx, taken from a dozen conferences held around the world, make up an impassioned journey through the varied cities and environments of South America, which examines the ethics and aesthetics of the landscape as true “living art”. Leafing through the almost 300 illustrated pages of the book in an impassioned visual and theoretical journey, concepts such as “The composition of the landscape”, “The ecology of the garden” and “Light in open space” provide a step-by-step definition of a portrait of Burle Marx as an all-round designer, whose desire was to bring about radical changes to the city and society of the second half of the twentieth century. 

5. A wander through the magnetic city
Following Delirious, writing an innovative book on New York and its stories is perhaps not impossible, but it is most certainly a little complicated. Justin Davidson, the charismatic critic of architecture and classical music, a Pulitzer prize winner, who for almost a decade has been telling of the city and its most hidden and unusual aspects through the pages of the very popular New York Magazine does an excellent job. Taking that experience as his cue, in Magnetic City, Davidson creates an unusual guide for travellers both from the city and from beyond, tourists and natives, compulsive readers and walkers. Constructed around seven walking tours (the Financial District, the Seaport and Brooklyn Waterfront, the World Trade Centre, the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and the High Line, Forty-Second Street, the Upper West Side and Sugar Hill and the South Bronx), his constantly-changing New York comes to life through the stories which emerge from interviews with urban architects, developers, visionaries and thinkers, but also and, perhaps above all, from the minute and profound details captured on the corners of the streets.