From October 2nd, at the bookshop, we are pleased to display Salt of the Earth by Barbara Boissevain: a special collector’s edition and a portfolio. Salt of the Earth takes us on a visual odyssey, exploring the transforming landscapes of the San Francisco Bay. These images taken over the last thirteen years, offer a vivid and intimate exploration of the dystopian landscapes situated in the heart of Silicon Valley.
The special edition book (like the standard edition), contains ninety-six color photographs that pivot between abstraction and representation. Barbara Boissevain’s compositions vary from single images to diptychs and abstract aerial grids. From formal landscapes to underwater perspectives. Together, they build a fuller picture of the ecological wonder unfolding in the San Francisco Bay as the largest wetland restoration in the United States unfolds. They combine to form a harmonious circular narrative of conceptual realism, renewal, rhythm, texture, form, and color.

On February 22nd, we presented "The Divine Tourist" by Daniele Villa Zorn, along with the exhibition showcasing the artist's original collages.

Daniele Villa Zorn has always created collages using a simple, minimalist technique that can be reminiscent of the essential composition of haikus: he combines only two photographic fragments, two images, one of which is generally marked by a tear. Over the years, much of his work has leaned towards the use of nature images, extracted from travel books and tourist guides primarily produced between the 1950s and early 1970s, where the Olympic tranquility of natural elements is subverted by the fragmentation and recomposition inherent in collage.

In 2023, he published "The Divine Tourist" with Leporello Books, a book in which the right balance between the evocative power of the images and their pure aesthetic value is embodied by the figure of a special tourist who, with the gift of ubiquity, enviable detachment, and infinite possibilities of movement, roams like a privileged alien in this fictitious universe.

On December 6th, we presented "Trapa Natans," a photographic book by Igor Ponti, published by Fontana Edizioni. This project spanned two years, during which the photographer dedicated himself to capturing the ever-changing soul of the landscape surrounding Lake Muzzano. The result is an in-depth exploration of the intricate relationship between humans and nature.
Through his camera lens, Ponti managed to create a visual narrative that delves into the complexity of both urban and natural landscapes, highlighting the beauty and fragility of the environment around us. The focus is on the water chestnut, Trapa Natans, a plant that once thrived in the waters of Lake Muzzano but became extinct due to a lack of care and attention from the region.
This serves as a powerful warning: a reminder of the consequences of our indifference towards the environment and an invitation to commit to protecting our natural heritage. His images are visual testimonies of the current state of the territory. The photographer invites us to reflect on our impact on the world around us.

On Thursday, March 30th, the artists Margherita Del Piano and Bruna Ginammi present their latest editorial works that reflect on migrant communities in Italy. For the occasion, a display will be set up in the bookstore with photographs from the projects "Good Things from the World" by Margherita Del Piano and "Home" by Bruna Ginammi.

On Thursday, March 2nd, at the Artphilein bookstore, photographer Andrea Valsecchi will present his artist's book "Swipe Up" in conversation with art critic Luca Panaro, founder and director of Chippendale Studio and Dummy Photobook.

"Swipe Up" explores the boundary—now surpassed—between the real world and the virtual world. Elements characteristic of the web are added to photographs of real modern urban landscapes, resulting in an ambiguous situation that disorients.

Are we governed by the Algorithm? Is our goal to function or to exist? These are some of the questions arising from the dialogue, published in the volume, between the author and Franco-Argentine philosopher and psychoanalyst Miguel Benasayag, a scholar of the relationship between humans and technology.

Chippendale Studio is a project on contemporary imagery founded in Milan in 2013 by Luca Panaro. It is also an archive of self-published editorial works, in unique copies and limited editions, involving artists of different generations, capable of exploring the possibilities of the image in the form of a book.

For the occasion, the original photographs from the book will be exhibited, and volumes from the Dummy Photobook archive of Chippendale Studio will be available in the bookstore.

On February 9th, 2023, Artphilein Bookstore welcomes the display and the presentation of TUTTI FRUTTI by Andrea Basileo.

TUTTI FRUTTI is a project about childhood that began in 2015 during a long-term participation as a volunteer for an inclusive tourist camp program in Switzerland. The project was exhibited in a solo exhibition in 2021 at Casa Pessina of the Mendrisio Art Museum, and it is now part of its art collection.

"Ettaro" is a daily diary, without elisions, whose white squares do not hide Pietro Bologna’s absences.A diary of latent images. 
During his morning walks with the dog, for several years, almost as an obsessive ritual, he has been surprised by silent appeals, invisible reflections of light that provoke a subtle reaction, that in its sacrifice—its renunciation—finds its salvation. 
Angelo Lumelli, among the few recipients of Pietro’s “good morning message”— taken with a cellphone, the photographs were despatched immediately— responded with the texts collected in this book.

On December 3rd, 2022, Artphilein Bookstore welcomes the presentation of the book "Le insidie delle immagini" with the authors Sara Benaglia and Mauro Zanchi.

"The digital image that appears on displays and circulates on the Internet is composed of an algorithmic part and a visual part (what the algorithm makes appear temporarily on the screen); the latter acts as a decoy for other calculation procedures used by control and surveillance systems to extract information (Ingrid Hoelzl, Image-Transaction, in Networker Liminality, Parallax, 2020, Vol. 26, N.1, pp. 20-23).
We are witnessing a disappearance of the subject of vision and at the same time the birth of a new gaze, that of the device that watches and controls us."

On September 28th, on the occasion of the opening of the new Artphilein Bookstore space, we held a talk with photographer Maurizio Montagna and architect-urbanist Elisa Cattaneo, accompanied by exhibition inspired by Montagna's new photobook "Toros. The Marking of a Territory".