IN THE EYE OF BRUNO BARBEY
The publishing house Delpire & Co is reissuing a new version of the photographic book “The Italians” by French-Swiss photojournalist Bruno Barbey. It is based on the “Encyclopédie essentielle” series created by the publisher Robert Delpire in the early 1960s. For the occasion, the eighty-five black and white photographs are accompanied by a text written by the Italian writer Giosuè Calaciura. Discovery.
Bruno Barbey is a professional photojournalist who has photographed numerous conflicts in France and abroad, such as the Gulf War and the student revolt of May 1968. A lover of neo-realism, most of his work is imbued with it. In 1965, he joined the Magnum Photos agency, which fell in love with his melancholic and striking photographs.
“It’s Italy cut in two, the South and the North, in a black and white that becomes a metaphor for two different conditions,” says Giosuè Calaclura. In the 1960s, Bruno Barbey had the idea of photographing the streets of an Italy slowly recovering from the ravages of the Second World War. Page after page, the black and white photographs tell a story. The story of a population that is trying to reconnect with the pleasures of a simple life.
Bruno Barbey’s “The Italians” is also an exhibition. The black and white photographs can be seen until 2 July 2023 in the heart of the Pavillon Comtesse de Caen, at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
“The Italians” by Bruno Barbey
Publisher: Delpire & Co.
Price: €42
delpireandco.com
Exhibition “The Italians”
Académie des Beaux-Arts
75006 Paris
Until July 2nd 2023
academiedesbeauxarts.fr
Marine Mimouni