Foreword by Max Kozloff. Introduction by Luigi Ballerini.
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.
Featured image is reproduced from Charles H. Traub: Dolce Via.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
TIME LightBox
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.
Conde Nast Traveler
Alice Newell-Hanson
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.
In his introduction to Dolce Via: Italy in the 1980s, Damiani's eye-opening new monograph on New York photographer Charles Traub, Max Kozloff writes, "He describes the pleasures of the senses and of the flesh in a playful manner too serious for the vacationer. What attracts his eye is at the expense of the monuments, though they play a sly and necessary role as background. Traub's chief motifs are youthful, supple, contemporary bodies in summer dress or undress. Behind them can be glimpsed the nudities of the gods in their more oracular exchanges. The interplay between animate and inanimate forms is carried out in chance and sometimes in droll combinations, not always on an elevated level." Traub launches the book Wednesday, April 9 at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, NYU. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 11.75 x 9.5 in. / 112 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9788862083447 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 3/31/2014 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Damiani. Foreword by Max Kozloff. Introduction by Luigi Ballerini.
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.
