Humboldt Books

Run by Giovanna Silva, Humboldt is an Italian publishing house based in Milan. Humboldt draws inspiration from scientific explorations of the 18th and 19th centuries with the aim of examining travel narrative today. Humboldt collects multidisciplinary experiences, combines knowledge and practices for recounting travels and countries with a watchful and unconventional eye. Humboldt investigates the intersection of journey with geography, literature and art. The publishing house has three editorial lines: Travel Books, Artists' Books, Atlas. A series of special projects and an online section complete the catalogue.
 
Milan
www.humboldtbooks.com
info@humboldtbooks.com
 
110 titles
Series:
 
Nino Migliori - Gente del Delta 1958
Nino Migliori
Gente del Delta 1958
2021
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The early work of the doyen of Italian photography paint a striking portrait of Italy in the 1950s.
Nanna Debois Buhl - Cloud Behavior
Nanna Debois Buhl
Cloud Behavior
2020
English edition
A study of clouds through photographs, drawings, essays, and interviews.
Enzo Mari - Falce e martello / The Hammer and Sickle
Enzo Mari
Falce e martello / The Hammer and Sickle
2020
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The expanded anastatic reprint of the Italian designer's sulphurous catalog of 1973.
Nathalie du Pasquier - Campo di Marte
Nathalie du Pasquier
Campo di Marte
2020
English edition
currently out of stock
Artist's book.
Michele Lombardelli - California
Michele Lombardelli
California
2020
English edition
A collection of photographs and drawings retracing the founding Californian experience of the artist.
Federico Patellani - Stromboli 1949
Federico Patellani
Stromboli 1949
2020
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
In the spring of 1949, while they were shooting “Stromboli” on the island of the same name, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini began a love affair which was to cause a scandal. The great photographer Federico Patellani documented the development of the film as well as life on the island.
Jonas Mekas - Transcript 04 44\' 14\
Jonas Mekas
Transcript 04 44' 14" – Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR
2020
bilingual edition (English / Lithuanian)
Full transcript of Mekas's Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR: a five-hour-long film made up of footage from US television newscasts covering the independence of Lithuania and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Fog Friend Font - Ways of Doing Multilingual Sense (box set)
Fog Friend Font – Ways of Doing Multilingual Sense (box set)
2020
English edition (texts in Inuktitut and other languages)
Box set comprising five books, a vinyl and a supplementary dust jacket, each highlighting different practices and transformative developments occurring in the realm of writing and speaking today as triggered by digital communication.
Carlo Levi a San Costantino Albanese - Archivi della Basilicata – Vol. 2
Carlo Levi a San Costantino Albanese – Archivi della Basilicata – Vol. 2
2020
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Three multidisciplinary essays—from cultural anthropology to photography analysis—based on visual archives documenting the visit of writer, painter and politician Carlo Levi to an Albanian community in Southern Italy (second volume in the series “Archivi della Basilicata”).
Antonio Rovaldi - The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill - New York City
Antonio Rovaldi
The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill – New York City
2019
English edition
This publication documents a visual research on the perimeters of all five boroughs of New York, featuring a photographic portfolio, a set of maps and a series of texts.
Luca Vitone - Romanistan
Luca Vitone
Romanistan
2019
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Both a journal and a photographic report, this publication documents Luca Vitone's travel from Italy to India, in the footsteps of the first Roma migrations between the eighth and fourteenth centuries.
La Bonifica di Bradano e Metaponto - Archivi della Basilicata – Vol. 1
La Bonifica di Bradano e Metaponto – Archivi della Basilicata – Vol. 1
2019
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The first in a series of publications dedicated to the exploration of the archives of the Italian region of Basilicata from an artistic perspective. This volume focuses on areas affected by the reclamation of the water system.
Lele Saveri - Hong Kong Barricades
Lele Saveri
Hong Kong Barricades
2019
English edition
Images of the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong by Italian photographer Lele Saveri.
Aesthetics and Politics of Logistics
Aesthetics and Politics of Logistics
2019
English edition
Aesthetics and politics of architecture of logistics.
Neither Nor / Né altra né questa - The challenge to the Labyrinth / La sfida al Labirinto
Neither Nor / Né altra né questa – The challenge to the Labyrinth / La sfida al Labirinto
2019
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The catalogue of the Italian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale investigates and develops the theme chosen by the curator Milovan Farronato for the exhibition: the labyrinth.
Antonio Grulli - Tel Aviv - Jerusalem Diary
Keren Cytter, Antonio Grulli
Tel Aviv – Jerusalem Diary
2019
English edition
A travel diary / a screenplay.
Mario Schifano - America 1970
Mario Schifano
America 1970
2019
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Mario Schifano's road trip in the United States.
Linda Fregni Nagler - Yama no Shashin
Linda Fregni Nagler
Yama no Shashin
2018
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
This publication presents a project by Linda Fregni Nagler about the photographic “School of Yokohama”, which emerged during the Meiji era in Japan. Over the past ten years, the artist has collected hand-colored photographs of this period representing Mount Fuji. She re-photographed them, printed them and colored them by hand, according to colorization method of that time.
Gabriele Basilico - Free Zone 2006
Gabriele Basilico
Free Zone 2006
2018
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
In 2006, film director Amos Gitai invited Gabriele Basilico to undertake a journey retracing the locations of the shooting of Gitai's film Free Zone, on the demilitarized zone between Israel and Jordan. This publication follows this unique photographic project.
Vincenzo Castella - Mississippi / Tennessee 1976
Vincenzo Castella
Mississippi / Tennessee 1976
2018
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
A photographic journey in search of the very last bluesmen. The birth of a vocation for the Italian photographer.
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli - Towards the Altar of a God Unknown - Liberian Notes
Federico Lodoli, Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli
Towards the Altar of a God Unknown – Liberian Notes
2018
English edition
Federico Lodoli and Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli went twice in Liberia to carry out a study on the war. This publication gathers their travel memoirs, interviews with Liberian warlords and a photographic reportage.
Paolo Gioli - Etruschi Polaroid 1984
Paolo Gioli
Etruschi Polaroid 1984
2018
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
This publication features an unpublished series of artworks by artist Paolo Gioli based on polaroid images of etruscan funerary sculptures set in the Italian city of Volterra. The volume is supplemented by a text on Volterra by novelist D. H. Lawrence, and an essay by historian of photography Roberta Valtorta.
Hämatli & Patriæ
Hämatli & Patriæ
2018
trilingual edition (English / German / Italian)
Catalogue documenting an eponymous exhibition project which interprets contemporary issues such as migration, nationalism, populism and identity, using the symbolism in the Flemish painting of 1570 by Simon de Myle entitled Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat.
Hercule Florence - Le Nouveau Robinson
Hercule Florence
Le Nouveau Robinson
2018
English edition
Through a series of scientific contributions and archives, this publication recounts the extraordinary character that was Hercule Florence—an explorer, an inventor and an artist, considered one of the inventors of photography.
Hilario Isola - Oh… My God! - Bamboo Scaffolding on Myanmar Pagoda
Hilario Isola
Oh… My God! – Bamboo Scaffolding on Myanmar Pagoda
2017
English edition
This artist's book collects a photo series taken in spring 2017 in Myanmar, one of the Buddhism's sacred places, where one hundred or so temples have been destroyed by a recent earthquake. Now the pagodas affected by the earthquake, covered by thin bamboo structures, have taken original and unexpected forms, hanging between architecture and art, life and destruction. This temporary condition allowed Isola to catalogue, study and also to develop a sort of appropriation.
Rita Canarezza & Pier Paolo Coro - San Marino - 30th September 1950
Rita Canarezza & Pier Paolo Coro
San Marino – 30th September 1950
2017
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
This publication documents a previously unreleased video project by Canarezza & Coro inspired by poet Eugenio Montale's unusual walk across the Italy-San Marino border to receive a Literature Prize in a context of tensions between the two States. The volume also includes fragments of forty-seven poems by Eugenio Montale, modified by the two artists.
Gabriele Basilico - Glasgow 1969
Gabriele Basilico
Glasgow 1969
2017
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Then architecture student Gabriele Basilico photographs the suburbs of Glasgow on a late summer afternoon of 1969, with its Scottish kids, terrains vagues, and 19th-century industrial archaeology. A photographic baptism for Basilico, who will become one of the main contemporary figures of the medium. The publication of this early series is completed with texts by Umberto Fiori, Pippo Ciorra, and Giovanna Calvenzi.
Federico Patellani - Matera 1953
Alberto Lattuada, Federico Patellani
Matera 1953
2017
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
The troglodyte town of Matera in Southern Italy has fascinated generations of filmmakers since the Post-war area. Documenting the making of the 1953 film She-Wolf by Alberto Lattuada set in Matera, photographer Federico Patellani provides a unique insight of the life of the provincial city in the fifties.
Nanna Debois Buhl - Intervals and forms of stones of stars
Nanna Debois Buhl
Intervals and forms of stones of stars
2017
English edition
A biological investigation of a Nordic man-made beach landscape through a series of cameraless photographic registrations of the site's flora, fauna, and particles.
Michele Lombardelli - Los Angeles 1989 Tokyo 1991
Michele Lombardelli
Los Angeles 1989 Tokyo 1991
2017
English edition
Los Angeles 1989 Tokyo 1991 brings together a collection of images from two of the most complex and undefinable metropolises on the face of the Earth, the social and urban form of which is ceaselessly reshaped by the minimal existence of millions of people in movement. Lombardelli's photographs are also cinematographic homages to the works of Wim Wenders and Yasujirō Ozu.
Gianni Pettena - The Curious Mr. Pettena - Rambling around USA – 1971-73
Gianni Pettena
The Curious Mr. Pettena – Rambling around USA – 1971-73
2017
English edition
The Curious Mr. Pettena recounts various steps along a journey, through cities and wide open natural spaces, undertaken by the anarchitect Gianni Pettena at the start of the 1970s across the United States.
Ugo Mulas - Danimarca 1961
Ugo Mulas
Danimarca 1961
2017
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
In 1961, L'Illustrazione Italiana sends critic Giorgio Zampa and photographer Ugo Mulas to carry out a reportage in Denmark. Along their meetings with writer Karen Blixen or Nobel Prize Nils Bohr, the two correspondents also witness the new manifestations of the Scandinavian lifestyle, characterized by its design and its modern habitats.
Diego Perrone - War Games
Diego Perrone
War Games
2017
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Stemming from a project dedicated to the city of Genoa and in particular to its relationship with the sea, this photographic artist's book extends the site-specific glass sculpture designed by Perrone inside Villa del Principe's Hall of the Shipwreck.
Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi - The Arrow of Time - Notes from a Russian Journey – 1989-1990
Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi
The Arrow of Time – Notes from a Russian Journey – 1989-1990
2017
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
This publication reproduces the experimental filmmakers' notebooks from their journey in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. Gianikian & Ricci Lucchi undertook this travel to gather the memories of the cinematographic literary and artistic Russian avant-garde of the '20s and '30s, seeking out survivors and listening to their life stories.
Michele Mari - Dreams
Gianfranco Baruchello, Michele Mari
Dreams
2017
English edition
In this publication, artist Gianfranco Baruchello and writer Michele Mari join forces to provide descriptions of their own dreams. Baruchello's illustrations and Mari's written notes unveil oneiric worlds made of symbols, recurring images, and obsessions, and address the question: just what are dreams made of?
Riccardo Giacconi - The Variational Status
Riccardo Giacconi
The Variational Status
2017
bilingual edition (English / French)
Artist and researcher Riccardo Giacconi investigates the relationship between a range of narrative forms (puppetry, street storytellers, flyers and pamphlets) and a series of pre-political acts of revolt staged between Italy and South America. This publication documents his research project and features a series of texts, notes, archives, illustrations, and interviews.
Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff - Berlin, Zürich, Zürich, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, London
Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff
Berlin, Zürich, Zürich, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, London
2016
English edition
This publication collects black and white photographs taken at apartment viewings in Berlin, London and Zürich in 2015. The images render a landscape of apartments, mostly empty, punctuated by potential buyers or renters projecting their own possible futures onto the spaces.
Rä di Martino - The Day He Swims Thru Marrakech
Rä di Martino
The Day He Swims Thru Marrakech
2016
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Photographic companion book to the film La controfigura (“The stand-in”) by Rä di Martino: the tale of a cinema troupe in Marrakech trying to shoot the remake of The Swimmer, the 1968 film with Burt Lancaster, based on a short story of the same name by John Cheever.
Emanuele Trevi - Ontani in Bali
Emanuele Trevi, Giovanna Silva
Ontani in Bali
2016
English edition
Writer Emanuele Trevi and photographer Giovanna Silva recount, each in their own manner, their journey with artist Luigi Ontani in Bali at the time of the preparation of the Ogoh Ogoh carnival procession. With original illustrations by Ontani.
Gabriele Basilico - Marocco 1971
Gabriele Basilico
Marocco 1971
2016
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Marocco 1971 offers an intimate, social, and aesthetical portrait of Morocco by Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico. Set during the Summer of 1971, the series also brings back the distinctive spirit of this era.
Luigi Comencini - Italia 1945-1948
Luigi Comencini
Italia 1945-1948
2016
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
50 black & white photographs of post-war Italy taken by director Luigi Comencini shortly before his debut behind the camera. With a series of writings establishing connections between his work as a photographer and his cinematographic oeuvre.
Ettore Favini - Arrivederci
Ettore Favini
Arrivederci
2016
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
Arrivederci recalls the artist's personal journey in Sardinia to explore textile craftsmanship. Favini narrates the stories of each piece of fabric he gathered and used for his new body of work—from its origin to the exhibition display. The publication is enriched with photographic documentation and texts by curators and stylist Antonio Marras.
Donatella Bernardi - Into Your Solar Plexus
Donatella Bernardi
Into Your Solar Plexus
2016
English edition
This artist's book presents the sum of a multitude of journeys, people and stories collected and edited by Donatella Bernardi and stemming from her own family archives. The artist connects this whole documentation with works by Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair and her daughter Hala Schoukair, as well as with the Swiss Confederation Fine Art Collection.
Nanna Debois Buhl - Palm Tree Studies in South Tyrol and Beyond
Nanna Debois Buhl
Palm Tree Studies in South Tyrol and Beyond
2016
English edition
Botanical trajectories and symbolic dimensions of Merano's palm trees (artist's book).
Claudia Losi - How do I imagine being there?
Claudia Losi
How do I imagine being there?
2016
English edition
What language should be used to describe a place? This question is the starting point and the core question of Claudia Losi's project and namesake book, a collection of transversal contributions, from art to geography, from semiotics to psychology, which interrogates the way we perceive places and the role of our imagination in such a process.
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