Dolce Via

(Hardback)

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Description

In his latest collection, photographer Charles H. Traub (born 1945) turns his emphatically American gaze upon the streets and byways of Italy, from Milan to Marsala. Traub's brilliant blues, reds and yellows accent the baroque posturing and gestures of strangers and ordinary people. Traub's friend and guide, the late photographer Luigi Ghirri, said of the imagery, "you see our foibles, strip us bare, make love through the camera and then venerate us." Dolce Via is the first comprehensive collection of these vivid color photographs, which were made in Italy during the early 1980s. This publication includes contributions from American art critic, photographer and founding editor of Artforum, Max Kozloff, and the Italian poet, Luigi Ballerini.

Reviews

American Street photographer Charles Traub found his muse in the Italy of the early 1980s. "I swa the country as a wondrous place for drama, display, humanity, pathos, and joy," says Traub. "All of these things were played out on the streets of every ciy, and my purpose was just to look." Walking through the back alleys of Venice one day, he came across two kids eating gelato by a canal, Isola di San Michele behind them. While their matching tomato-red outfits and bowl haircuts are a time stamp from 1981, their postures suggest the much older Italian idea of dolce far niente, the pleasure of doing nothing.--Alice Newell-Hanson "Conde Nast Traveler"
Bordering on fashion, folly, excess and the everyday, Traub's images of Italy in the 80s are bursting with life and saturated with color, and welcome the reader into a lush and vibrant whilrwind.-- "TIME LightBox"