The Interrupted City

Rating:
Summary: in his own words
Review: Over the years it's become, for me, a seaport, a personal point from which to leave for other seas and other cities, and afterwar come back to and leave again. A port; that's to say, a constituted place where specimen copies, finds and traces of more distant places fetch up. Images that are deposited in the memory like a substance the city knows how to retain and make its own, yet which it also knows how to reconstitute, metabolized, into other images to deck out the past and the present with, the near and the far, according to whim, to the beating of our hearts.
Modest finds of a contemporary archaeology. This city belongs to me and I to it, almost as if I were a particle floating within its enormous body. A constant need to know its corporeality obsesses me, a need to interpret its features and its hidden parts, but also its famous places and most known aspect over and over again. Between us there is a wide open landscape that affords us a constant interchange of perceptions, a particular point of view. At times I get the feeling it's suddenly revealing itself more fully to me, that it's telling me of its of its ostructions, its consistency and its material. The city uses me, inhabits me.
(Gabriele Basilico)

Rating:
Summary: Clear and present pictures
Review: Photobooks of cities exist in all orders. But a book by Gabriello Basilico is something extraordinary. He takes pictures of city-scapes (buildings, streets, roads) in which nothing seems to happen than only the existing city. Hardly any people are seen. Only some parked cars, balconies, asphalt and the lines of concrete, windows, viaducts and lampposts for example. I think Basilico took his pictures mostly in the early hours of sunday morning. It is all disconsolate. A fine book with beautifull pictures of the urban planet. Recommended for photo lovers and readers who want to compare their own city with Sydney, Milano, Palermo, Rotterdam or Tokio. It looks as it all has been built by the same architect. I also recommend Basilico's newest book City Scapes, published by Thames and Hudson, which I hope is also soon to be had by Amazon.