Olivo Barbieri

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.