At the end of 2006, Italian photographer Armin Linke was commissioned by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities to realize a reportage. For this commission, the artist proposed a photographic mapping of all the institutions housed in various historical buildings in Rome. His research attempted to carry out both a documentation of and an inquiry into the characteristics of public institutions. The result is a portrait of the Italian State through the understanding of the architectures in which functions and ceremonies are performed daily.
Including excerpts from Giorgio Agamben's recent book "Il Regno e la Gloria," the publication invites a critical reading of the representation of power, while displaying very rarely seen interiors and details of the government's settings in an objective style typical of Linke's images.
Armin Linke (born 1966, lives and works in Berlin) is an artist working with photography, combining different mediums to blur the border between fiction and reality. He builds up an ongoing archive on human activity and the most varied natural and man-made landscapes.
