Gabriele Basilico

A prized collection of more than 300 photographs, tracing the stories of such cities as Rotterdam and Barcelona, Antwerp and Valencia, Nice, Frankfurt, and Genoa. The combination of street signs, billboards, cars, bridges, roads, trains, ships, and cranes refashions the city from what some deem chaos into a testament of human creativity and artistic freedom. The images explore the complex interrelationships between the human-made, constructed environment and the natural one—as well as the connections these international cities have with each other. A testament to urban beauty, this monograph pictures the modern lives that encompass the city and investigates their intricate bonds to architecture, factories, buildings, rivers, and parks.

As part of a project dedicated to the memory of the Beirut war, this reflection on the destruction of a city captures the horrific and decimating effects of such a conflict. With unbiased accuracy and artistic vision, photography master Gabriele Basilico exemplifies war reportage and the value of captured images as a means to keep historical memories alive. He visited the war-torn city in 1991 and again in 2003 to showcase, via pictorial representations, a destroyed past with only a blueprint for an unpredictable future. These provocative photographs show not only the dramatic effects of war, but also examine the toll taken on the urban identity of Beirut and question how a city can rise up to reclaim its life.

This is the first true retrospective monograph by the major international photographer. Gabriele Basilico’s landscapes explore the complex interrelationships between the built environment and the natural one. With more than three hundred photographs, from Glasgow to Tel Aviv, from Milan to Beirut, this is a comprehensive overview of a major figure whose career has spanned almost forty years.