Olivo Barbieri: Site Specific

Site Specific is a summary of Italian photographer Olivo Barbieri’s (born 1954) ten-year project to record the world’s cities in aerial photographs. On the one hand, the book offers remarkable documentation, by one of today’s most thrilling image-makers, of 25 cities throughout the world. On the other, it is a narrative of Barbieri’s ever-evolving approach to photography and his thoughts about the nature of the medium. Presented chronologically, the book begins with the distinctive “tilt-shift” photographs of Italian cities with which Barbieri first established his reputation, and which launched a popular stylistic movement for selective-focus photographs. As the series continued, with portrayals of cities all over the world, Barbieri introduced other devices and approaches to “distort” perceived reality—such as playing with color, registration and the deletion or discoloring of particular details—to dramatic effect. The result is a remarkable photo essay about twenty-first-century urban space and about photography itself. Stunningly designed and presented in a luxuriously large format, the book is introduced by Christopher Phillips.