Views

Views is the first book by photographer and architect Andrea Garuti, It gives us an unprecedented interpretation of contemporary cityscape through numerous panoramic shots of cities worldwide: 50 plates telling the story of 9 great metropolises from New York to Tokyo, Havana to Moscow. The images are introduced in texts by contemporary art critic Gianluca Marziani and Andrea Salvatici, poet and playwright. Garuti’s specific cipher is reinterpretation of the classical vision of the frame: he frees his images from the uniqueness of the moment seized by the shot, then freezes a multiplicity of times in the photo. So the resulting image is deconstructed into a kaleidoscope of possible moments and emotions, where the details constitute the whole but also exist as moments in themselves. The book presents a selection of architectonic and urban views shot between 2003 and 2006. The places are very well known indeed, perhaps even trite (the dilapidated buildings of Havana or Moscow’s Red Square) but Garuti nonetheless makes them special with a masterful technique of decomposition carried out at the printing phase, without recourse to digital retouching. Garuti stratifies the cityscape and multiplies its contents to guide the eye towards that anonymity made of glass, iron and cement which today constitutes an actual aesthetic category: the non-place.

Andrea Garuti, born in Florence in 1965, took up photography at the age of 13 under the guidance of his father, a photographer of architecture. From the mid 90’s onwards he alternated commissions from big multinationals (Etro, Fay, Champion, Wind, Vodafone) with photojournalism for magazines such as Elle, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Case da Abitare, Elle Decor, Amica, Io Donna and Vogue. In 2006 he held his first solo exhibition, Urbe tremula, at the Romberg arte spaces in Rome.