Paolo Gasparini. Andata e Ritorno

It may seem exaggerated, or presumptuous, but already in the distant 60s – when the magic word was not pronounced and the famous Martin Parr was still a child – I knew that a photobook was not a book with well-framed photographs and each one by its own account, but it was a racconto through the images. I knew that the essence of the photobook is narration and that through its own visual language it builds a story. This was described and explained to me by Paul Strand traveling from the frailejones of the Venezuelan Andes to the crude horizon of the rocker towers that suck the oil in Lake Maracaibo. I also remember that in 1965 the historic and enlightened photography critic Renzo Chini, during his speech at the National Congress on the Problems of Science and Arts – in Torino – defined clearly and clearly: “The photobook is an expressive genre as are comedy, movies, the quartet, and so on.”

And so goes part of my little history in the world of photography, with its photobooks and everything. I hope with this new edition of Andata e ritorno to have managed to express my way of saying the world: from Friuli de Pasolini and Zigaina bicycles to the gastronomic manifesto. From yesterday’s bread to today’s hunger. From the photographic study of the brothers Aldo and Giuliano Mazzuco, in Gorizia, to the Zapatista Mexico of land and freedom. From the mines of Cerro Rico – I mean, it is a saying – from Potosí, in Bolivia, to Unter den Linden Boulevard in East Berlin. From the First to the Third World, always hurt, always with the bleeding heart in hand. To Cuba, from utopia to disenchantment. From São Paulo to Los Angeles and from Caicara del Orinoco to Paris, from London to Cuzco and from Caracas to Vibonati, in the Gulf of Policastro. From the captive lion of Manaus – in the Amazon River – to the reflections as gasified shooting stars of the elegant showcases, like phosphorescent knives of Agent Orange nonsanto. Always, in each place, the society of the spectacle corrupts the landscape and life. And everywhere men and things are signified by the pain and the offenses of power. To not forget.