The photography books of 2022

Some say ice
Alessandra Sanguinetti, Mack
The new book by the Argentinian photographer is a game of interlocking childhood memories and literary and visual suggestions. But not just any memories, but the memory that prompted Sanguinetti to approach and become passionate about photography: in the seventies, in Buenos Aires, she leafed through Wisconsin death trip by Michael Leasy, who combines late 19th-century photos by Charles Van Schaick – taken in the US town of Black River Falls – with reports from local newspapers. Stories of life and death that remain etched in the photographer’s mind until she decides in turn in 2014 to see that rural Midwestern community with her own eyes and create a personal journey more than a reportage where the photos function as containers of symbols and mysteries. (Giovanna D’Ascenzi)

Sorry I gave birth and I disappeared but now I’m back
Andy Galdi Vinko, Trolley books
“I love being a mother. I also love being an artist”. The phrase of the Hungarian photographer Andy Galdi Vinko is a declaration of intent mixed with the desire to reflect on how difficult and delicate it can be to step into these two roles and try to carry them out as one would like. The book is made like a diary, in which images taken by the photographer of herself and of her friends scroll one after the other, even before knowing what the result would be. There are more explicit photos and others that are evocative, sometimes even ironic: the mating of two turtles and fissures on a nipple where a flower seems to have sprouted. Thanks to this alternating and dense rhythm – there is very little white space, with the exception of a few pages where you can read sentences written in childish handwriting – we immerse ourselves in the questions that Galdi herself asks herself: because even if having a child is a experience so universal can make people feel so lonely? What happens to a woman’s freedom, friends, sexual desire when she becomes a mother? (Rosy Santella)

The transvestites, color photographs
Lisetta Carmi, ContrastoBooks
Died last July at the age of ninety-eight, Lisetta Carmi marked the history of photography. In the sixties she was the first to document what we would today call an lgbtq + community, ignoring the taboos of the time and revealing, with great empathy and delicacy, the reality of those on the margins of society. Her 1972 book The transvestites, on the people who lived and worked in the former Jewish ghetto of Genoa, caused a scandal, so much so that many bookstores refused to sell it. Now, fifty years after its publication, ContrastoBooks publishes a new volume, strongly desired by the photographer herself, with unpublished color images found in Carmi’s archive in 2017. A true treasure, which allows a new reading of the photographer’s long work with the transvestite community of Genoa. (Elena Boille)

Another country. British documentary photography since 1945
a cura at Gerry Badger, Thames & Hudson
In this impressive volume – 300 pages to contain 250 photos taken by about 160 authors – the critic Gerry Badger succeeds in the operation of describing documentary photography in the United Kingdom starting from 1945 to today. But as he immediately explains to us in the introduction, here the concept of documentary must be understood in a very broad way. Land in fact little frequented and abused by institutions (such as the Royal photographic society) which since the invention of the medium consider only pictorialism as photographic art, we have to wait for the authors who emigrated to the country between the two world wars, such as Bill Brandt, to witness the rebirth of a photograph capable of questioning reality. Badger’s selection comes out of the restrictive enclosure of the genre and includes as “documents” works that speak of British society also drawing on different methods and languages, for example with reconstructed scenes (Hannah Starkey), photo-texts (Jo Spence) or collages (Linder). “Photography can be a mirror and reflect life as it is,” said Tony Ray-Jones, one of the country’s greatest photographers, “but I believe it is also possible, like Alice, to cross the looking glass and discover another world with the camera”. (Giovanna D’Ascenzi)

The infinite instant
Geoff Dyer, The Assayer
The subtitle “Essay on photography” could be misleading, or frightening, but the style and content of this book, which has finally been reprinted in Italy, are quite far from that form. Dyer, who is neither a photography historian nor a photographer, as he himself declares at the beginning of the volume, embarks on a very personal journey through the association of images united by certain details. All this ranging between different languages ​​and historical periods. (Rosy Santella)

How to raise a hand
Angelo Vignali, Witty Books
After the death of his illustrator father, Angelo Vignali discovers a box containing 313 black and white prints and drawings that the man had collected during his lifetime. Nothing too strange except that what is continually and obsessively depicted in these materials are the father’s fingers. The discovery triggers the idea of ​​a project that establishes a new dialogue between the two men, an imaginary collaboration between the existing prints and the casts that Vignali makes of his hands. An experimental work that speaks of family, memory and identity through touch and sight. (Giovanna D’Ascenzi)

Once in China
Danilo De Marco, Forum
Photojournalists often avoid publishing the images in which the people portrayed look into the camera, because they reveal the presence of the photographer, who loses his aura of invisible witness. Instead, in this large volume, full of double-page images, there are dozens of eyes scrutinizing us. It may be that De Marco is a particular photojournalist, who uses photography above all to enter into relationships with others, aware that only in exchange can one try to make sense of things. The book collects the black and white shots taken in 1992 during a long journey through China. Leafing through it, you don’t simply go back in time, because the actions, the looks, the moments that De Marco captures are not only those of humanity at the time, but also of today’s, wherever in the world you are. (Elena Boille)

Glance
edited by Alessia Tagliaventi, Contrasto
Inside the book is a black card with a hole in the center. It is an invitation to come closer, to dwell on the elements of the images selected by the curator Alessia Tagliaventi in this book designed for girls and boys. Each photo is accompanied by the story of where and when it was taken, but above all it leaves the viewer with questions. An interesting and necessary job, given that photography is missing from the subjects taught at school. To learn from an early age to go beyond appearances, to change point of view, to put oneself in the shoes of the shooter and to rethink the way of observing reality. (Rosy Santella)

The choices of Christian Caujolle

Undertow
Damien Daufresne, Blow Up Press
Probably one of the best books seen in the last twenty five years. An object in which photography and painting are intertwined, perfectly created by an artist able to say “I” with a universal voice. A unique way of building a floating world, at the limits of representation, to let emotions mix, between intimate history and dreams, body and nature, tenderness and uncertainty.

As long as
Celine Croze, Editions Lamaindonne
In a striking dark color palette, a story of love and death in Caracas, Venezuela. A first-person account that avoids the pitfalls of the diary and narcissism and never loses its intensity. Life at a thousand miles an hour translated with absolute sincerity.

Flipping his eyes around arte povera 1960-1975. Photography, film, video
Various authors, Atelier EXB
The catalog that accompanies a major Parisian exhibition on a little-known aspect of one of the most important artistic movements of the twentieth century. Many discoveries of images of famous artists. A great pleasure.

William Eggleston: The outlands, Selected works
David Zwirner Books
A magnificent book, extraordinarily printed, which contains numerous unpublished works by a pioneer of color photography. The publications dedicated to Eggleston’s work have multiplied for some years but this volume is one of the most successful.