The new Electaphoto series also comprises original examples of thematic research like that recently undertaken by Luigi Spina in the heart of Ancient Rome, between the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill.
The monograph, illustrated with Spina’s highly atmospheric photos, once more imbues ancient Roman ruins with the aura of what early travelers and artists over the ages must have seen, free from the stereotyped iconographic consumerism of today’s mass tourism. Having spent ten silent years among the marbles of the Farnese collection which resulted in black and white shots of tangible quality (Electa 2009-2010), after his extraordinary color photographic campaign in the Palatine Museum marking the 2,000th anniversary of the Emperor Augustus (Electa 2014), and his dialog with the ancient ruins of Hadrian’s Villa, Luigi Spina is back again, this time to photograph Italy’s archeological landscape. Faced with the cumbersome legacy of those who have preceded him, he now sets out to create “the largest book of human history”, leafing through its pages to capture the precious, intricate monumental layers of the epicenter of Roman art, fleeting changes in the weather and the hours of the day: triumphal arches, columns of temples which have become icons of ‘Roman-ness’, and the magnificent, eloquent ruins of imperial Roman residences, to which he succeeds in giving breadth, depth and color. And this is another facet of the poetic originality of his work: a perception of uninhabited Antiquity which, given a perspective of light and time, makes it possible to capture the dynamically contemporary nature of things Classical.