Il Bel Paese

By Stefano de Luigi

Stefano De Luigi on his long journey through Italy, in search of traces of what was once called the Bel Paese. We are faced with a 'truthful' description of Italian landscapes, and yet the classical narrative.

Stefano De Luigi's images restore the landscape's semantic value. The Italian landscape is a complex one, subject to the continuous superimposition of new signs. Yet in some ways, it is also a resistant landscape. While on the one hand, in fact, these signs - mostly similar and very much the offspring of consumer society and mass tourism - make Italy alternately a commodified trophy to be exhibited or "one anonymous, unfriendly, messy suburb," on the other hand, they are sometimes grafted onto different realities - the upshot once again of those local identities that have long characterized the various areas of the peninsula - giving rise to genuine short circuits of meaning and vision where, in a bizarre potpourri, the contemporary and the ancient, the beautiful and the ugly, the rare and the banal, the serial and the unique all dialog with one another.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CD18LDGW
• ISBN13: 9791280978059
• Release Date: March 2024
• Publisher: L'Artiere
• Length: 80 Pages