Olivo Barbieri

Site Specific is a summary of Olivo Barbieri's ten-year project to record the world's cities in aerial photographs. On the one hand, the book offers remarkable documentation, by a thrilling image-maker, of twenty-five cities throughout the world. On the other, it is a narrative of Barbieri's evolving approach to photography and his thoughts about the nature of the medium. Presented chronologically, the photographs begin with the distinct "tilt-shift" photographs of Italian cities with which Barbieri first established his reputation-and that launched a popular stylistic movement for selective-focus photographs. During the series, he later 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. The book is introduced by Christopher Phillips and features Barbieri's city-by-city commentary. Aperture will present and tour an exhibition of the work beginning in the fall of 2013.