Hidden Cities: A Photobook
Introducing "Hidden Cities: A Photobook," a book editorial design that draws inspiration from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities." Created as an assignment for Editorial Design (IID3002) at Yonsei University during the Spring Semester of 2023, this photobook combines curated photographs and evocative texts to offer a unique perspective on urban landscapes. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this project serves as a catalyst for social awareness, encouraging readers to explore the hidden layers of cities and cherish the rare and underrated moments that unfold within them. By capturing these fleeting glimpses, the photobook invites viewers to reevaluate their surroundings and foster a deeper appreciation for the cities they inhabit or pass by.
Introducing "Hidden Cities: A Photobook," a book editorial design that draws inspiration from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities." Created as an assignment for Editorial Design (IID3002) at Yonsei University during the Spring Semester of 2023, this photobook combines curated photographs and evocative texts to offer a unique perspective on urban landscapes. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this project serves as a catalyst for social awareness, encouraging readers to explore the hidden layers of cities and cherish the rare and underrated moments that unfold within them. By capturing these fleeting glimpses, the photobook invites viewers to reevaluate their surroundings and foster a deeper appreciation for the cities they inhabit or pass by.
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$9.26 U.S.
Italo Calvino’s beloved, intricately crafted
novel about an Emperor’s travels—a
brilliant journey across far-off places and
distant memory.
HIDDEN CITIES
Excerpts from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
A PHOTOBOOK
Writtern by ITALO CALVINO
Illustrated by PHO VU
“The question that Calvino seems to be
asking is a big one: How should we live?”
—ERIC WEINER
“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires
and fears, even if the thread of their
discourse is secret, their rules are absurd,
their perspectives deceitful, and everything
conceals something else.” In a garden
sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young
Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and
Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed
the end of his empire coming soon. Marco
Polo diverts his host with stories of the
cities he has seen in his travels around the
empire: cities and memory, cities and desire,
cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities
and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As
Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor
detects these fantastic places are more than
they appear.
Calvino’s elusiveness comes also from the
honesty with which he develops his series.
“Invisible Cities” is an elegy, autumnal
and melancholy. Cities do move more
and more toward failure, and toward the
end of the book Procopia, the last of the
“Continuous Cities,” is so crowded that the
people hide the place and even the sky. And
there is Penthesilea, less an “aggregation of
opaque polyhedrons on the horizon” than
a limbo of endless outskirts. But the reader
finds something more interesting here
than decline and fall. Even the cities that
exhibit delusion and degeneration remain
the possibilities from which, as Marco tells
the Khan, any crystal‐perfect community
whose molecula’r form the Khan dreams of
must in be calculated.
HIDDEN CITIES
INVISIBLE CITIES
TITLES BY ITALO CALVINO
The Baron in the Trees
The Castle of Crossed Destinies Cosmicomics
Difficult Loves
If on a winter’s night a traveler Invisible Cities
Italian Folktales
Marcovaldo, or The seasons in the city
Mr. Palomar
The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount t zero
Under the Jaguar Sun
The Uses of Literature
The Watcher and Other Stories
HIDDEN
CITIES
INVISIBLE CITIES
Copyrigth © 1972 by Giuglio Einaudi Editore
English translation copyright © 1974 by Harcourt Brace & Company
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this
book, please write Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company 215 Park Avenue South New York NY 10003.
Layout and typesetting: Pho Vu
Text: Italo Calvino
Photographs: Robert Capa, Berenice Abbott, Aaron Siskind, Paul Strand,
Brassaï, Jerry Uelsmann, Vivian Maier
Format: 180x240 mm
ISBN: 0156453800
Incheon, South Korea
May 2023
ITALO CALVINO
PHO VU
HARCOURT BRACE & COMPANY (1974)
CONTENTS
001
INTRODUCTION
006
HIDDEN CITIES
Le città invisibili.
Three
002
HIDDEN CITIES
007
BRASSAÏ
One
French, born Hungary, 1899–1984
003
ROBERT CAPA
008
HIDDEN CITIES
Hungarian, 1913-1954
Four
BERENICE ABBOT
American, 1898–1991
009
MARIO GIACONELLI
AARON SISKIND
Italian, 1925–2000
American, 1903–1991
004
HIDDEN CITIES
010
HIDDEN CITIES
Two
Five
005
PAUL STRAND
011
JERRY UELSMANN
American, 1890–1976
American, 1934–2022
INTRODUCTION
Le città invisibili.
Kublai Khan does not
necessarily believe everything
Marco Polo says when he
describes the cities visited
on his expeditions, but the
emperor of the Tartars does
continue listening to the
young Venetian with greater
attention and curiosity than he
shows any other messenger
or explorer of his.
tributes of precious metals,
tanned hides, and tortoise shell.
It is the desperate moment
when we discover that this
empire, which had seemed
to us the sum of all wonders,
is an endless, formless ruin,
that corruption’s gangrene has
spread too far to be healed by
our scepter, that the triumph
over enemy sovereigns has
In the lives of emperors there
is a moment which follows
pride in the boundless
extension of the territories
we have conquered, and
the melancholy and relief
of knowing we shall soon
give up any thought of
knowing and understanding
them. There is a sense of
emptiness that comes over
us at evening, with the odor
of the elephants after the
rain and the sandalwood
ashes growing cold in the
braziers, a dizziness that
makes rivers and mountains
tremble on the fallow curves
of the planispheres where
they are portrayed, and rolls
up, one after the other, the
despatches announcing to
us the collapse of the last
he last enemy troops, from
defeat to defeat, and flakes
the wax of the seals of
obscure kings who beseech
our armies’ protection,
offering in exchange annual
made us the heirs of their
long undoing. Only in Marco
Polo’s accounts was Kublai
Khan able to discern, through
the walls and towers destined
to crumble, the tracery of
a pattern so subtle it could
escape the termites’ gnawing.
Allied troops in Paris attaching Germans entrenched in public buildings, 11 September, 1944.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 12
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HIDDEN CITIES
One
1
In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt
carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the
head of a pin which, if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals
within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens,
the pools, the streamers across the streets, the kiosks in the
squares, the horse-racing track.
That point does not remain
there: a year later you will find
it the size of half a lemon, then
as large as a mushroom, then a
soup plate. And then it becomes
a full-size city, enclosed within
the earlier city: a new city
that forces its way ahead in
the earlier city and presses it
toward the outside.
Olinda is certainly not the only
city that grows in concentric
circles, like tree trunks which
each year add one more ring.
But in other cities there remains,
in the center, the old narrow
girdle of the walls from which the
withered spires rise, the towers,
the tiled roofs, the domes, while
the new quarters sprawl around
them like a loosened belt. Not
Olinda: the old walls expand
bearing the old quarters with
them, enlarged, but maintaining
their proportions on a broader
horizon at the edges of the city;
they surround the slightly newer
quarters, which also grew up on
the margins and became thinner
to make room for still more
recent ones pressing from inside;
and so, on and on, to the heart
of the city, a totally new Olinda
which, in its reduced dimensions
retains the features and the flow
of lymph of the first Olinda and
of all the Olindas that have
blossomed one from the other;
and within this innermost circle
there are already blossoming
though it is hard to discern
them—the next Olinda and
those that will grow after it.
...The Great Khan tried to
concentrate on the game: but
now it was the game’s reason
that eluded him. The end of
every game is a gain or a loss:
but of what? What were the
real stakes? At checkmate,
beneath the foot of the king,
knocked aside by the winner’s
hand, nothingness remains:
a black square, or a white
one. By disembodying bis
conquests to reduce them to
the essential, Kublai had arrived
at the extreme operation:
the definitive conquest, of
which the empire’s multiform
treasures were only illusory
envelopes; it was reduced to a
square of planed wood.
1
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ROBERT CAPA
October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954
BIOGRAPHY
Robert Capa was a Hungarian–American war photographer and photojournalist. He is considered by some
to be the greatest combat and adventure photographer in history.
Friedman had fled political repression in Hungary when he was a teenager, moving to Berlin, where he
enrolled in college. He witnessed the rise of Hitler, which led him to move to Paris, where he met and
began to work with his professional partner Gerda Taro, and they began to publish their work separately.
He subsequently covered five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II
across Europe, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and the First Indochina War, with his photos published in major
magazines and newspapers. He was killed when he stepped on a landmine in Vietnam.
Capa was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, where his parents were
tailors; Capa’s mother was a successful fashion shop owner, and his father was an
employee of her shop. Capa had two brothers: a younger brother, photographer Cornell
Capa and an older brother, László Friedmann. Cornell moved to Paris in 1936 to join his
older brother Capa, where he found an interest in photography instead of staying in
the field of medicine. Not much is known of Capa’s older brother László, except that he
married Angela Maria Friedmann-Csordas in 1933. He died a year later and was buried
next to his father in the Kozma Utca Jewish Cemetery.
At the age of 18, Capa moved to Vienna, later relocated to Prague, and finally settled
in Berlin: all cities that were centers of artistic and cultural ferment in this period. He
started studies in journalism at the German Political College, but the Nazi Party instituted
restrictions on Jews and banned them from colleges. Capa relocated to Paris, where he
adopted the name ‘Robert Capa’ in 1934. At that time, he had already been a hobbyphotographer.
Capa is known for redefining wartime photojournalism. His work came from the trenches
as opposed to the more arms-length perspective that was the precedent. He was famed
for saying,
“
If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.
The origin of the quote can be traced back Over time, the quote has become
to an interview Capa gave to the journalist synonymous with Capa’s approach to
Richard Whelan in 1947 for the book “The photography and his bold, immersive style
Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm of capturing images in the midst of intense
Security Administration Photographs.” situations. It is often cited as an inspiration
In the interview, Capa discussed his
for photographers, emphasizing the
experiences photographing the D-Day importance of proximity and intimacy with
nvasion during World War II. When asked the subject matter to create powerful and
about the close proximity of his images, impactful photographs.
Capa replied, “The pictures are there, and
you just take them. If your pictures aren’t
good enough, you’re not close enough.”
“
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 18 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 19
ROBERT
CAPA
Hungarian, 1913-1954
Then Marco Polo spoke: “Your chessboard, sire, is
inlaid with two woods: ebony and maple. The square
on which your enlightened gaze is fixed was cut from
the ring of a trunk that grew in a year of drought:
you see how its fibers are arranged? Here a barely
hinted knot can be made out: a bud tried to burgeon
on a premature spring day, but the night’s frost
forced it to desist.”
Until then the Great Khan had not realized that the
foreigner knew how to express himself fluently in his
language, but it was not this fluency that amazed
him.
“Here is a thicker pore: perhaps it was a larvum’s
nest; not a woodworm, because, once born, it would
have begun to dig, but a caterpillar that gnawed the
leaves and was the cause of the tree’s
being chosen for chopping down ... This edge
was scored by the wood carver with his gouge
so that it would adhere to the next square, more
protruding....”
The quantity of things that could be read in a little
piece of smooth and empty wood overwhelmed
Kublai; Polo was already talking about ebony forests,
about rafts laden with logs that come down the
rivers, of docks, of women at the windows....
The Great Khan owns an atlas
where all the cities of the empire
and the neighboring realms an
drawn, building by building and
street by street, with walls, rivers,
bridges, harbors, cliffs. He realizes
that from Marco Polo’s tales it is
pointless to expect news of those
places, which for that matter he
knows well: how at Kambalu,
capital of China, three square
cities stand one within the other,
each with four temples and four
gates that are opened according
to the seasons; how on the island
of Java the rhinoceros rages,
charging, with his murderous
horn; how pearls are
gathered on the ocean bed
off the coasts of Malabar.
Kublai asks
Marco, “When
you return to
the West, will
you repeat to your people
the same tales you tell me?”
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 20
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BERENICE ABBOTT
July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991
BIOGRAPHY
Berenice Abbott was an American photographer best known for her portraits of cultural figures of the
interwar period, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science
interpretation of the 1940s to the 1960s.
Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio and brought up in Ohio by her divorced mother, née Lillian Alice
Bunn (m. Charles E. Abbott in Chillicothe OH, 1886).
She attended Ohio State University for two semesters, but left in early 1918 when her professor was
dismissed because he was a German teaching an English class. She moved to New York City, where she
studied sculpture and painting. In 1921 she traveled to Paris and studied sculpture with Emile Bourdelle.
While in Paris, she became an assistant to Man Ray, who wanted someone with no previous knowledge of
photography. Abbott took revealing portraits of Ray’s fellow artists.
Her university studies included theater and sculpture. She spent two years studying
sculpture in Paris and Berlin. She studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere in
Paris and the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. During this time, she adopted the French
spelling of her first name, “Berenice,” at the suggestion of Djuna Barnes. In addition to
her work in the visual arts, Abbott published poetry in the experimental literary journal
transition. Abbott first became involved with photography in 1923, when Man Ray hired
her as a darkroom assistant at his portrait studio in Montparnasse. Later, she wrote:
“I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else.” Ray
was impressed by her darkroom work and allowed her to use his studio to take her own
photographs. In 1921 her first major works was in an exhibition in the Parisian gallery Le
Sacre du Printemps. After a short time studying photography in Berlin, she returned to
Paris in 1927 and started a second studio, on the rue Servandoni.
Berenice Abbott, West Street, 1938, Silver Gelatin Photograph
“
Berenice Abbott is an American
photographer known for her documentary
and street photography. Abbott’s work
played a significant role in capturing the
essence of New York City during the 1930s.
The quote reflects Abbott’s belief in the
power of photography as a medium to
enhance perception and understanding.
She saw photography as a tool that could
not only capture the visible world but
also reveal hidden truths and encourage
viewers to engage more deeply with their
surroundings. Through her photographs,
Photography helps people to see.
“
Abbott aimed to provide a fresh
perspective and to awaken people’s
awareness of the world around them.
Abbott’s statement emphasizes the
ability of photography to uncover and
communicate stories, to shed light on
aspects of life that may otherwise go
unnoticed. It suggests that photography
has the capacity to open people’s
eyes, to encourage them to observe
and appreciate the world in a more
meaningful and perceptive way.
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BERENICE
ABBOTT
Kublai asks Marco,
“When you return to the
West, will you repeat to
your people the same
tales you tell me?”
“I speak and speak,”
Marco says, “but the
listener retains only the
words he is expecting.
The description of the
world to which you lend
a benevolent ear is one
thing; the description
that will go the rounds of
the groups of stevedores
and gondoliers on the
street outside my house
the day of my return
is another; and yet
another, that which I
might dictate late in life,
if I were taken prisoner
by Genoese pirates
and put in irons in the
same cell with a writer
of adventure stories.
It is not the voice that
commands the story: it is
the ear.”
American, 1898–1991
Kublai asks Marco, “When you return to the West, will
you repeat to your people the same tales you tell me?”
“At times I feel your
voice is reaching me
from far away, while I
am prisoner of a gaudy
and unlivable present,
when all forms of human
society have reached an
extreme of their cycle
and there is no imagining
what new forms they
may assume. And I hear,
from your voice, the
invisible reasons which
make cities live, through
which perhaps, once
dead, they will come to
life again.”
The Great Khan owns
an atlas whose drawings
depict the terrestrial
globe all at once and
continent by continent,
the borders of the most
distant realms, the ships’
routes, the coastlines, the
maps of the most illustrious
metropolises and of the
most opulent ports. He leafs
through the maps before
Marco Polo’s eyes to put
his knowledge to the test.
The traveler recognizes
Constantinople in the city
which from three shores
dominates a long strait, a
narrow gulf, and an enclosed
sea; he remembers that
Jerusalem is set on two
hills, of unequal height,
facing each other; he has
no hesitation in pointing to
Samarkand and its gardens.
For other cities he falls back
on descriptions handed down
by word of mouth, or he
guesses on the basis of scant
indications: and so Granada,
the streaked pearl of the
caliphs; Lübeck, the neat,
boreal port; Timbuktu, black
with ebony and white with
ivory; Paris, where millions of
men come home every day
grasping a wand of bread. In
colored miniatures the atlas
depicts inhabited places of
unusual form: an oasis hidden
in a fold of the desert from
which only palm crests peer
out is surely Nefta; a castle
amid quicksands and cows
grazing in meadows salted
by the tides can only suggest
Mont-Saint-Michel; and a
palace that instead of rising
within a city’s walls contains
within its own walls a city can
only be Urbino.
The atlas depicts cities
which neither Marco nor the
geographers know exist or
where they are, though
they cannot he missing
among the forms
of possible cities: a
Cuzco on a radial and
multipartite plan which
reflects the perfect
order of its trade, a
verdant Mexico on
the lake dominated by
Montezuma’s palace,
a Novgorod with
bulb-shaped domes,
a Lhassa whose white
roofs rise over the
cloudy roof of the
world. For these, too,
Marco says a name,
no matter which, and
suggests a route to
reach them. It is known
that names of places
change as many times
as there are foreign
languages; and that
every place can be
reached from other
places, by the most
various roads and
routes, by those who
ride, or drive, or row,
or fly.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 24
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AARON SISKIND
December 4, 1903 – February 8, 1991
BIOGRAPHY
Aaron Siskind was an American photographer whose work focuses on the details of things,
presented as flat surfaces to create a new image independent of the original subject. He was
closely involved with, if not a part of, the abstract expressionist movement, and was close
friends with painters Franz Kline (whose own breakthrough show at the Charles Egan Gallery
occurred in the same period as Siskind’s one-man shows at the same gallery), Mark Rothko, and
Willem de Kooning.
Siskind was born in New York City, growing up on the Lower East Side. Shortly after graduating
from City College, he became a public school English teacher. Siskind was a grade school English
teacher in the New York Public School System for 25 years, and began photography when he
received a camera as a wedding gift and began taking pictures on his honeymoon.
Early in his career Siskind
was a member of the New
York Photo League, where he
produced several significant
socially conscious series of
images in the 1930s, among
them “Harlem Document”.
In the 1940s, Siskind lived
above the Corner Book Shop,
at 102 Fourth Avenue in Manhattan;
he also maintained a
darkroom at this location.
Siskind was born in New York City, growing up on the Lower East Side. Shortly after
graduating from City College, he became a public school English teacher. Siskind was
a grade school English teacher in the New York Public School System for 25 years, and
began photography when he received a camera as a wedding gift and began taking
pictures on his honeymoon.
Early in his career Siskind was a member of the New York Photo League, where he
produced several significant socially conscious series of images in the 1930s, among them
“Harlem Document”.
In the 1940s, Siskind lived above the Corner Book Shop, at 102 Fourth Avenue in
Manhattan; he also maintained a darkroom at this location.
“
Photography is
a way of feeling,
of touching, of
loving. What you
have caught on
film is captured
forever... it
remembers
little things,
long after you
have forgotten
everything.
“
In 1950 Siskind was the first
to obtain the guggenheim
grant met Harry Callahan
when both were teaching at
Black Mountain College in
the summer, where he also
met Robert Rauschenberg
who throughout his life always
kept a particular Siskind
print on his work wall (see
MOMA retrospective 2017).
Later, Callahan persuaded
Siskind to join him as part of
the faculty of the IIT Institute
of Design in Chicago (founded
by László Moholy-Nagy as
the New Bauhaus. In 1971 he
followed Callahan (who had
left in 1961) by his invitation
to teach at the Rhode Island
School of Design, until both
retired in the late 1970s.
Siskind was an influential American
photographer known for his abstract and
expressive photography, particularly in
the realms of documentary and street
photography.
The quote reflects Siskind’s profound
understanding of the emotional and
lasting impact that photography can
have. Siskind believed that throughthe
act of photography, one could not
only capture visual moments but also
convey and evoke deep emotions. He
saw the camera as a tool that allowed
photographers to connect with their
subjects and the world around them on a
profound level.
Siskind’s quote suggests that a
photograph has the ability to preserve
memories and emotions that might
otherwise fade away with time. It implies
that the act of photographing is an act of
love and a means of capturing the essence
of a moment. According to Siskind, even
the smallest details that might be forgotten
by the human mind can be retained
through photography, serving as a lasting
testament to the experiences and emotions
captured in the image.
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AARON
SISKIND
Hungarian, 1913-1954
“I think you recognize cities better on the atlas than when you visit them in person,” the
emperor says to Marco, snapping the volume shut.
The end of every game is a gain or a loss: but of what? What were the real stakes?
At checkmate, beneath the foot of the king, knocked aside by the winner’s hand,
nothingness remains: a black square, or a white one.
And Polo answers, “Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes
to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless
dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that
assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name.”
The Great Khan owns an atlas in which are gathered the maps of all the cities: those
whose walls rest on solid foundations, those which fell in ruins and were swallowed
up by the sand, those that will exist one day and in whose place now only hares’ holes
gape.
Marco Polo leafs through the pages; he recognizes Jericho, Ur, Carthage, he points to
the landing at the mouth of the Scamander where the Achaean ships waited for ten
years to take the besiegers back on board, until the horse nailed together by Ulysses
was dragged by windlasses through the
Scaean gates. But speaking of Troy, he
happened to give the city the form of
Constantinople and foresee the siege which
Mohammed would lay for long months
until, astute as Ulysses, he had his ships
drawn at night up the streams from the
Bosporus to the Golden Horn, skirting Pera
and Galata. And from the mixture of those
two cities a third emerged, which might be
called San Francisco and which spans the
Golden Gate and the bay with long, light
bridges and sends open trams climbing its
steep streets, and which might blossom as
capital of the Pacific a millennium hence,
after the long siege of three hundred years
that would lead the races of the yellow
and the black and the red to fuse with the
surviving descendants of the whites in an
empire more vast than the Great Khan’s.
The atlas has these qualities: it reveals the
form of cities that do not yet have a form
or a name. There is the city in the shape
of Amsterdam, a semicircle facing north,
with concentric canals—the princes’, the
emperor’s, the nobles’; there is the city
in the shape of York, set among the high
moors, walled, bristling with towers; there
is the city in the shape of New Amsterdam
known also as New York, crammed with
towers of glass and steel on an oblong
island between two rivers, with streets
like deep canals, all of them straight,
except Broadway.
The catalogue of forms is endless: until
every shape has found its city, new
cities will continue to be born. When
the forms exhaust their variety and
come apart, the end of cities begins.
In the last pages of the atlas there is
an outpouring of networks without
beginning or end, cities in the shape
of Los Angeles, in the shape of Kyōto-
Ōsaka, without shape.
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HIDDEN CITIES
Two
2
In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as they
walk in the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the
railings over the river and press their fists to their temples. In
the morning you wake from one bad dream and another begins.
At the workbenches where, every moment, you hit your finger
with a hammer or prick it with a needle, or over the columns
of figures all awry in the ledgers of merchants and bankers,
or at the rows of empty glasses on the zinc counters of the
wineshops, the bent heads at least conceal the general grim
gaze. Inside the houses it is worse, and you do not have to enter
to learn this: in the summer the windows resound with quarrels
and broken dishes.
1
2
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PAUL STRAND
October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976
BIOGRAPHY
Paul Strand was an American photographer and
filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist
photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward
Weston, helped establish photography as
an art form in the 20th century. In 1936, he
helped found the Photo League, a cooperative
of photographers who banded together
around a range of common social and creative
causes. His diverse body of work, spanning six
decades, covers numerous genres and subjects
throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
Paul Strand was born Nathaniel Paul Stransky on
October 16, 1890, in New York; his Bohemian
parents were merchant Jacob Stransky and
Matilda Stransky (née Arnstein). When Paul was
12, his father gave him a camera as a present.
In his late teens, he was a student of a renowned
documentary photographer Lewis Hine
at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. It
was while on a field trip in this class that
Strand first visited the 291 art gallery
– operated by Stieglitz and Edward
Steichen – where exhibitions of work by
forward-thinking modernist photographers
and painters would move Strand to take
his photographic hobby more seriously.
Stieglitz later promoted Strand’s work in
the 291 gallery itself, in his photography
publication Camera Work, and in his
artwork in the Hieninglatzing studio. Some
of this early work, like the well-known
Wall Street, experimented with formal
abstractions (influencing, among others,
Edward Hopper and his idiosyncratic urban
vision). Other of Strand’s works reflect his
interest in using the camera as a tool for
social reform. When taking portraits, he
would often mount a false brass lens to the
side of his camera while photographing
using a second working lens hidden under
his arm. This meant that Strand’s subjects
likely had no idea he was taking their
picture.It was a move some criticized.
Strand was one of the founders of
the Photo League, an association of
photographers who advocated using their
art to promote social and political causes.
Strand and Elizabeth McCausland were
“particularly active” in the League, with
Strand serving as “something of an elder
statesman.” Both Strand and McCausland
were “clearly left-leaning,” with Strand
“more than just sympathetic to Marxist
ideas.” Strand, McCausland, Ansel Adams,
and Nancy Newhall all contributed to the
League’s publication, Photo News.
In 1948, CBS commissioned Strand to
contribute a photo for an advertisement
captured “It is Now Tomorrow”: Strand’s
photo showed television antennas atop
New York City.
“
Paul Strand was an influential American
photographer and filmmaker known for his
contributions to modern photography and his
documentary-style images.
The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere,
far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always
on his doorstep.
This quote reflects Strand’s perspective on the
creative process and the artist’s mindset. It
suggests that an artist, including a photographer,
possesses a boundless world of inspiration and
creative possibilities. According to Strand, the
artist’s world is not confined to a specific location
or limited by physical boundaries. Instead, it is an
expansive realm that can be found in any setting,
whether it be far away or right at their doorstep.
Strand’s quote encourages artists, including
photographers, to embrace the idea that
creativity and inspiration can be found anywhere.
Strand married the painter Rebecca
Salsbury on January 21, 1922. He
photographed her frequently, sometimes
in unusually intimate, closely cropped
compositions. After divorcing Salsbury,
Strand married Virginia Stevens in 1935.
They divorced in 1949; he then married
Hazel Kingsbury in 1951 and they
remained married until his death in 1976.
The timing of Strand’s departure to
France is coincident with the first libel
trial of his friend Alger Hiss, with whom
he maintained a correspondence until his
death. Although he was never officially a
member of the Communist Party, many
of Strand’s collaborators were either
Party members (James Aldridge; Cesare
Zavattini) or prominent socialist writers
and activists (Basil Davidson). Many
of his friends were also Communists
or suspected of being so (Member of
Parliament D. N. Pritt; film director Joseph
Losey; Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid;
actor Alex McCrindle). Strand was also closely involved with Frontier Films, one of more than
20 organizations that were identified as “subversive” and “un-American” by the US Attorney
General. When he was asked by an interviewer why he decided to go to France, Strand began
by noting that in America, at the time of his departure, “McCarthyism was becoming rife and
poisoning the minds of an awful lot of people.”
“
It emphasizes
the importance
of being
open to the
beauty and
possibilities
that surround
us, no matter
how mundane
or ordinary
they may
initially seem.
The quote suggests that the artist’s
perception and ability to see and
appreciate the world are crucial in
finding extraordinary moments and
capturing them through their chosen
medium.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 32 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 33
PAUL
STRAND
Hungarian, 1913-1954
And yet, in Raissa, at every moment
there is a child in a window who
laughs seeing a dog that has jumped
on a shed to bite into a piece of
polenta dropped by a stonemason
who has shouted from the top of
the scaffolding, “Darling, let me dip
into it,” to a young serving-maid
who holds up a dish of ragout under
the pergola, happy to serve it to the
umbrella-maker who is celebrating
a successful transaction, a white
lace parasol bought to
display at the races by a
great lady in love with an
officer who has smiled at
her taking the last jump,
happy man, and still
happier his horse, flying
over the obstacles, seeing
a francolin flying in the sky,
happy bird freed from its
cage by a painter happy at
having painted it feather
by feather, speckled with
red and yellow in the
illumination of that page
in the volume where the
philosopher says: “Also
in Raissa, city of sadness,
there runs an invisible
thread that binds one
living being to another for
a moment, then unravels,
then is stretched again
between moving points
as it draws new and rapid
patterns so that at every
second the unhappy
city contains a happy
city unaware of its own
existence.”
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 34 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 35
HIDDEN CITIES
Three
3
A sibyl, questioned about Marozia’s fete, said,
“I see two cities: one of the rat, one of the swallow.”
1
3
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BRASSAÏ
9 September 1899 – 8 July 1984
BIOGRAPHY
Brassaï was a Hungarian–French
photographer, sculptor, medalist,[1] writer,
and filmmaker who rose to international
fame in France in the 20th century. He was
one of the numerous Hungarian artists who
flourished in Paris beginning between the
world wars.
In the early 21st century, the discovery
of more than 200 letters and hundreds of
drawings and other items from the period
1940 to 1984 has provided scholars with
material for understanding his later life and
career.
Gyula (Julius) Halász, Brassaï (pseudonym)
was born on 9 September 1899 in Brassó,
Kingdom of Hungary (today Brașov,
Romania) to an Armenian mother and a
Hungarian father. He grew up speaking
Hungarian and Romanian. When he was
three his family lived in Paris for a year,
while his father, a professor of French
literature, taught at the Sorbonne.
As a young man, Halász studied painting
and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy
of Fine Arts (Magyar Képzőművészeti
Egyetem) in Budapest. He joined a cavalry
regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army,
where he served until the end of the First
World War.
He cited Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as an
artistic influence.
Following WWI, his hometown of Brassó,
and the rest of Transylvania, was transferred
from the Kingdom of Hungary to Romania
at the Treaty of Trianon. Halász left for
Berlin in 1920 where he worked as a
journalist for the Hungarian papers Keleti
and Napkelet. He started studies at the
Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine
Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste),
now Universität der Künste Berlin. There
he became friends with several older
Hungarian artists and writers, including
the painters Lajos Tihanyi and Bertalan Pór,
and the writer György Bölöni, each of whom
later moved to Paris and became part of the
Hungarian circle.
In 1924, Halasz moved to Paris to live, where
he would stay for the rest of his life. He began
teaching himself the French language by
reading the works of Marcel Proust. Living
among the gathering of young artists in
the Montparnasse quarter, he took a job as
a journalist. He soon became friends with
the American writer Henry Miller, and the
French writers Léon-Paul Fargue and Jacques
Prévert. In the late 1920s, he lived in the same
hotel as Tihanyi.
Miller later played down Brassai’s claims
of friendship. In 1976 he wrote of Brassai:
“Fred [Perles] and I used to steer shy of
him – he bored us.” Miller added that the
biography Brassai had written of him was
typically “padded”, “full of factual errors,
full of suppositions, rumors, documents he
filched which are largely false or give a false
impression.”
Halász’s job and his love of the city, whose
streets he often wandered late at night, led to
photography. He first used it to supplement
some of his articles for more money, but
rapidly explored the city through this
medium, in which he was tutored by his fellow
Hungarian André Kertész. He later wrote that
he used photography “to capture the beauty
of streets and gardens in the rain and fog, and
to capture Paris by night.” Using the name of
his birthplace, Halász went by the pseudonym
“Brassaï,” which means “from Brasso.”
Brassaï captured the essence of the city in his
photographs, published as his first collection
in the 1933 book entitled Paris de nuit (Paris
by Night). His book gained great success,
resulting in being called “the eye of Paris”
in an essay by Henry Miller. In addition to
photos of the seedier side of Paris, Brassai
portrayed scenes from the life of the city’s
high society, its intellectuals, its ballet, and
the grand operas. He had been befriended by
a French family who gave him access to the
upper classes. Brassai photographed many of
his artist friends, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo
Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti,
and several of the prominent writers of his
time, such as Jean Genet and Henri Michaux.
Young Hungarian artists continued to arrive
in Paris through the 1930s and the Hungarian
Night does not show things,
it suggests them. It disturbes
and surprises us with its
strangeness. It liberates forces
within us which are dominated
by our reason during the
“daytime.
“
Strand’s quote encourages artists, including
photographers, to embrace the idea that creativity
and inspiration can be found anywhere. It emphasizes
the importance of being open to the beauty and
possibilities that surround us, no matter how mundane
or ordinary they may initially seem. The quote
suggests that the artist’s perception and ability to
see and appreciate the world are crucial in finding
extraordinary moments and capturing them through
their chosen medium.
circle absorbed most of them. Kertèsz
immigrated to New York City in 1936. Brassai
befriended many of the new arrivals, including
Ervin Marton, a nephew of Tihanyi, whom
he had been friends with since 1920. Marton
developed his own reputation in street
photography in the 1940s and 1950s. Brassaï
continued to earn a living with commercial
work, also taking photographs for the U.S.
magazine Harper’s Bazaar.
He was a founding member of the Rapho
agency, created in Paris by Charles Rado in
1933.
Brassaï’s photographs brought him
international fame. In 1948, he had a one-man
show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
in New York City, which travelled to George
Eastman House in Rochester, New York; and
the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.MoMA
exhibited more of Brassai’s works in 1953,
1956, and 1968.[8] He was presented at the
Rencontres d’Arles festival in France in 1970
(screening at the Théâtre Antique, Brassaï by
Jean-Marie Drot), in 1972 (screening Brassaï si,
Vominino by René Burri), and in 1974 (as guest
of honour).
In 1979 Brassaï was inducted into the
International Photography Hall of Fame and
Museum.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 38 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 39
BRASSAÏ
Italian, 1925–2000
This was the interpretation of the
oracle: today Marozia is a city where
all run through leaden passages
like packs of rats who tear from
one another’s teeth the leftovers
which fell from the teeth of the most
voracious ones; but a new century
is about to begin in which all the
inhabitants of Marozia will fly like
swallows in the summer sky, calling
one another as in a game, showing
off, their wings still, as they swoop,
clearing the air of mosquitos and
gnats.
“It is time for the century of the
rat to end and the century of
the swallow to begin,” the more
determined said. In feet, already
beneath the grim and petty rattish
dominion, you could sense, among
the less obvious people a pondering,
the preparation of a swallowlike
flight, heading for the transparent
air with a deft flick of the tail, then
tracing with their wings’ blade the
curve of an opening horizon.
open and a different city appear. Then, an instant
later, it has already vanished. Perhaps everything
lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions
to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else
someone’s gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it
is enough for someone to do something for the
sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to
become the pleasure of others: at that moment,
all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is
transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as
a dragonfly. But everything must happen as if by
chance, without attaching too much importance to it,
without insisting that you are performing a decisive
operation, remembering learly that any moment the
old Marozia will return and solder its ceiling of stone,
cobwebs, and mold over all heads.
Was the oracle mistaken? Not necessarily. I interpret
it in this way: Marozia consists of two cities, the rat’s
and the swallow’s; both change with time, but their
relationship does not change; the second is the one
about to free itself from the first.
I have come back to Marozia after
many years: for some time the sibyl’s
prophecy is considered to have
come true; the old century is dead
and buried, the new is at its climax.
The city has surely changed, and
perhaps for the better. But the wings
I have seen moving about are those
of suspicious umbrellas under which
heavy eyelids are lowered; there are
people who believe they are flying,
but it is already an achievement if
they can get off the ground flapping
their batlike overcoats.
It also happens that, if you move
along Marozia’s compact walls, when
you least expect it, you see a crack
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4
HIDDEN CITIES
Four
Recurrent invasions racked the city of Theodora in the
centuries of its history; no sooner was one enemy routed than
another gained strength and threatened the survival of the
inhabitants. When the sky was cleared of condors, they had to
face the propagation of serpents; the spiders’ extermination
allowed the flies to multiply into a black swarm; the victory
over the termites left the city at the mercy of the woodworms.
One by one the species incompatible to the city had to
succumb and were extinguished. By dint of ripping away
scales and carapaces, tearing off elytra and feathers, the people
gave Theodora the exclusive image of human city that still
distinguishes it.
4
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 42 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 43
MARIO GIACONELLI
1 August 1925 – 25 November 2000
BIOGRAPHY
Mario Giacomelli was an Italian photographer and photojournalist in the genre of humanism.
Giacomelli was born in the sea-port town of Senigallia in the Marche region of Italy into a
family of modest means. Only nine when his father died, at 13, the boy left high school to
work as a typesetter and spent his weekends painting and writing poetry. After the horrors of
World War II, from 1953 he turned to the more immediate medium of photography and joined
the Misa Group, formed that year.
Giacomelli’s technique is distinctive. After
beginning with the popular and robust Comet
127 film-format viewfinder camera, made
in Italy by CMF Bencini from 1948 into the
1950s, in 1954 he bought a second-hand
Kobell, a larger coupled rangefinder camera
for 6x9 plates and film, one of only about 400
made by Boniforti and Ballerio in Milan from
about 1952, and modified it himself. He was
unafraid of exploiting the double-exposure
capability of its Compur shutter, as well
as soft focus, camera movement and slow
shutter speeds. His images are high-contrast, quite unlike the modulated full tonal range
of his mentor Cavalli, and are the result of using electronic flash, from overdevelopment
of his film and compensatory heavy printing so that nearly-black forms ‘float’ against a
white ground. In accounting for these choices he referred to his printing-industry and
graphic arts training; “For me the photographic film is like a printing plate, a lithograph,
where images and emotions become stratified.” After 1986, especially in his 1992-3
series Il pittore Bastari (‘The painter Bastari’) he artificially included consciously symbolic
cardboard masks and toy dogs.tailors; Capa’s mother was a successful fashion shop
owner, and his father was an employee of her shop. Capa had two brothers: a younger
brother, photographer Cornell Capa and an older brother, László Friedmann. Cornell
moved to Paris in 1936 to join his older brother Capa, where he found an interest in
photography instead of staying in the field of medicine. Not much is known of Capa’s
older brother László, except that he married Angela Maria Friedmann-Csordas in 1933. He
died a year later and was buried next to his father in the Kozma Utca Jewish Cemetery.
At the age of 18, Capa moved to Vienna, later relocated to Prague, and finally settled
in Berlin: all cities that were centers of artistic and cultural ferment in this period. He
started studies in journalism at the German Political College, but the Nazi Party instituted
restrictions on Jews and banned them from colleges. Capa relocated to Paris, where he
adopted the name ‘Robert Capa’ in 1934. At that time, he had already been a hobbyphotographer.
“
I was honest towards the people I photographed in Scanno,
because it was not my intention to say anything about their
social condition. I was involved neither with political issues
nor with the trend of seeking misery and poverty which many
photographers had towards the south of Italy at that time. In
Scanno I just wanted to dream; and I dreamt.
“
After pre-war years dominated by a Pictorialist aesthetic promoted by the Fascist
government, these artists enjoyed experimenting with form. He wandered the streets
and fields of post-war Italy, inspired by the gritty Neo-Realist films of Vittorio De Sica and
Roberto Rossellini,and influenced by the renowned Italian photographer Giuseppe Cavalli,
founder of Misa, and developing a style characterized by radical compositions, bold cropping
and stark contrasts.
In 1955 he was discovered in Italy by Paolo Monti, and beginning in 1963, became known
outside Italy through John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Giacomelli was inspired by the literature of
Cesare Pavese, Giacomo Leopardi (a native
of Giacomelli’s region) and the postwar
existentialist Eugenio Montale, giants
of Italian writing, from which he often
borrowed titles for his picture series, such
as the confronting, unsentimental pictures
he made (1955–57) in an old-people’s
home, where his mother worked as a
washer-woman; Verrà la more e avrà i tuoi
occhi (‘Death will come and will have your
eyes’), taken from a Pavese poem. He
wrote his own poetry and his pictures are
a reflection of their visual language.
Like other members of Misa, Giacomelli
photographed the simple lives of the poor
of southern Italy, in 1957 and 1959 visiting
Scanno, a small town in the Abruzzii
region which Henri Cartier-Bresson had
visited only five years before to make
quite different pictures.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 44 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 45
MARIO
GIACONELLI
Italian, 1925–2000
But first, for many long years, it was
uncertain whether or not the final victory
would not go to the last species left to
fight man’s possession of the city: the rats.
From each generation of rodents that the
people managed to exterminate, the few
surviviors gave birth to a tougher progeny,
invulnerable to traps and resistant to all
poison. In the space of a few weeks, the
sewers of Theodora were repopulated
with hordes of spreading rats. At last,
with an extreme massacre, the murderous,
versatile ingenuity of mankind defeated
the overweening life-force of the enemy.
Having said this, I do not wish your
eyes to catch a distorted image, so
I must draw your attention to an
intrinsic quality of this unjust city
germinating secretly inside the secret
just city: and this is the possible
awakening—as if in an excited
opening of windows—of a later
love for justice, not yet subjected
to rules, capable of reassembling
a city still more just than it was
before it became the vessel of injustice.
But if you peer deeper into
this new germ of justice you can
discern a tiny spot that is spreading
like the mounting tendency to
impose what is just through what
is unjust, and perhaps this is the
germ of an immense metropolis....
The city, great cemetery of the
animal kingdom, was closed, aseptic,
over the final buried corpses with
their last fleas and their last germs.
Man had finally reestablished the
order of the world which he had
himself upset: no other living species
existed to cast any doubts. To recall
what had been fauna, Theodora’s
library would preserve on its shelves
the volumes of Buffon and Linnaeus.
From my words you will have reached
the conclusion that the real Berenice
is a temporal succession of different
cities, alternately just and unjust. But
what I wanted to warn you about is
something else: all the future Berenices
are already present in this instant,
wrapped one within the other, confined,
crammed, inextricable.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 46
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HIDDEN CITIES
Five
5
I should not tell you of Berenice, the unjust city, which crowns
with triglyphs, abaci, metopes the gears of its meat-grinding
machines (the men assigned to polishing, when they raise
their chins over the balustrades and contemplate the atria,
stairways, porticos, feel even more imprisoned and short of
stature). Instead, I should tell you of the hidden Berenice, the
city of the just, handling makeshift materials in the shadowy
rooms behind the shops and beneath the stairs, linking a
network of wires and pipes and pulleys and pistons and
counterweights that infiltrates like a climbing plant among
the great cogged wheels (when they jam, a subdued ticking
gives warning that a new precision mechanism is governing
the city). Instead of describing to you the perfumed pools
of the baths where the unjust of Berenice recline and weave
their intrigues with rotund eloquence and observe with a
proprietary eye the rotund flesh of the bathing odalisques, I
should say to you how the just, always cautious to evade the
spying sycophants and the Janizaries’ mass arrests, recognize
one another by their way of speaking, especially their
pronunciation of commas and parentheses; from their habits
which remain austere and innocent, avoiding complicated
and nervous moods; from their sober but tasty cuisine, which
evokes an ancient golden age: rice and celery soup, boiled
beans, fried squash flowers. From these data it is possible to
deduce an image of the future Berenice, which will bring you
closer to knowing the truth than any other information about
the city as it is seen today. You must nevertheless bear in mind
what I am about to say to you: in the seed of the city of the
just, a malignant seed is hidden, in its turn: the certainty and
pride of being in the right—and of being more just than many
others who call themselves more just than the just. This seed
ferments in bitterness, rivalry, resentment; and the natural
desire of revenge on the unjust is colored by a yearning to be
in their place and to act as they do. Another unjust city, though
different from the first, is digging out its space within the
double sheath of the unjust and just Berenices.
1
5
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 48 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 49
JERRY UELSMANN
June 11, 1934 – April 4, 2022
BIOGRAPHY
Jerry Norman Uelsmann was an American
photographer.
As an emerging artist in the 1960s, Jerry
Uelsmann received international recognition for
surreal, enigmatic photographs (photomontages)
made with his unique method of composite
printing and his dedication to revealing the
deepest emotions of the human condition.
Over the next six decades, his contributions
to contemporary photography were firmly
established with important exhibitions,
prestigious awards and numerous publications.
Among his awards were a Guggenheim
Fellowship, National Endowment, Royal
Photographic Society Fellowship, and Lucie
Award.
Uelsmann described his creative process
as a journey of discovery in the darkroom
(visual research laboratory). Going against the
established practice of previsualization (Ansel
Adams, Edward Weston and others), he
coined a new term, post-visualization. He
decided the contents of the final print
after rather than before pressing the
shutter button. Uelsmann constructed
his dreams like a visual poet with results
that often seemed emotionally more
real than the factual world. By the1980s
he became one of the most collected
photographers in America. His work
influenced generations of both analog
and digital photographers. Although
he admired digital photography, he
remained completely dedicated to the
alchemy of film photography in the black
and white darkroom.
Uelsmann, a native of Detroit,
Michigan, credited his parents Norman
(a grocer,1904-1962) and Florence
(Crossman) Uelsmann (a homemaker,
1903–1986) for encouraging his
creativity. His mother saved his artworks
beginning in kindergarten and continuing
into college. Uelsmann’s father, whose
hobby was photography, built a
basement darkroom (c. 1948) to share
with his two sons, Jerry and Robert.
In high school he worked as a
photographer for the school newspaper
and later attended Rochester Institute
of Technology earning a BFA degree in
1957.
At RIT he was influenced by Minor
White and Ralph Hattersley who
taught craftsmanship (technical
precision) along with the emotional
and perceptual aspects of fine arts
photography. Uelsmann appreciated
White’s mystical philosophy and devotion
to Zen-like meditation even when not
photographing. He was particularly
affected by Minor White’s belief that
fine arts photographers should “strive to
capture subjects for what they are and
for what else they are”.
Uelsmann, known for his innovative and imaginative approach to photography, has spoken about
the idea of the camera as a tool for exploration and creative expression.
“
The simple act of having a camera, not a cell phone, but a
camera-camera, there’s a kind of a heightened perceptional
awareness that occurs. Like, I could walk from here to the
highway in two minutes, but if I had a camera, that walk could
take me two hours.
The abovementioned quote reflects Uelsmann’s
belief that the camera grants photographers
the freedom to delve into uncharted territories,
both externally and internally. It suggests
that through the act of photography, one can
embark on a journey of discovery, pushing
the boundaries of visual representation and
personal introspection.
The quote captures his perspective on how the
act of photographing with a camera-camera can
transform one’s perception of the surroundings
and lead to a more immersive and mindful
experience.
“
Uelsmann’s line of work often involved
intricate darkroom techniques, combining
multiple images to create dreamlike and
surreal compositions. With this quote,
he emphasizes that the camera serves
as a vehicle for exploration, enabling
photographers to push the limits of their
creativity and capture moments and visions
that might otherwise remain unseen.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 50 HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 51
JERRY
UELSMANN
American, 1934–2022
From these data it is possible to deduce an image of the future
Berenice, which will bring you closer to knowing the truth than any other
information about the city as it is seen today. You must nevertheless
bear in mind what I am about to say to you: in the seed of the city of
the just, a malignant seed is hidden, in its turn: the certainty and pride
of being in the right—and of being more just than many others who call
themselves more just than the just. This seed ferments in bitterness,
rivalry, resentment; and the natural desire of revenge on the unjust is
colored by a yearning to be in their place and to act as they do. Another
unjust city, though different from the first, is digging out its space within
the double sheath of the unjust and just Berenices.
Having said this, I do not wish your eyes to catch a distorted image, so I must draw
your attention to an intrinsic quality of this unjust city germinating secretly inside
the secret just city: and this is the possible awakening—as if in an excited opening
of windows—of a later love for justice, not yet subjected to rules, capable of
reassembling a city still more just than it was before it became the vessel of injustice.
But if you peer deeper into this new germ of justice you can discern a tiny spot that is
spreading like the mounting tendency to impose what is just through what is unjust,
and perhaps this is the germ of an immense metropolis....
From my words you will have reached the conclusion that the real Berenice is a
temporal succession of different cities, alternately just and unjust. But what I wanted
to warn you about is something else: all the future Berenices are already present in
this instant, wrapped one within the other, confined, crammed, inextricable.
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 52
HIDDEN CITIES INVISIBLE CITIES | Page 53
The end.
Dear readers,
As we come to the end of this remarkable journey through the pages of our photobook, I
find myself overwhelmed with a sense of awe and wonder. In the captivating realms of hidden
cities, we have traversed the imagination and creativity of Italo Calvino, finding inspiration
in his literary masterpiece, “Invisible Cities.” Now, as we bid farewell, I am filled with
a deep appreciation for the seven artists whose extraordinary photographs have breathed
life into the essence of our 9 panels assignment.
Each turn of the page has transported us to a new destination, where reality and fantasy intermingle,
blurring the boundaries between what is seen and what lies beneath the surface.
Just like the hidden cities in Calvino’s enchanting tales, these images have woven tales of
their own, capturing the essence of places both tangible and ethereal.
Through the lens of these talented artists, we have witnessed the delicate interplay of light
and shadows, the vibrant tapestry of colors, and the symphony of emotions that permeate
these hidden cities. They have invited us to explore the depths of our own imagination, to
question the boundaries of our perception, and to embrace the beauty of the unknown.
It is my sincerest hope that this photobook has sparked your curiosity, kindled your sense
of adventure, and offered you moments of respite from the constraints of reality. In these
pages, we have sought to ignite the flame of inspiration within you, urging you to embark
on your own voyages of discovery and to uncover the hidden treasures that lie in wait.
Thank you, dear readers, for joining us on this extraordinary journey. May these hidden
cities continue to linger in your thoughts, whispering their secrets and inspiring your own
creative endeavors. May the images captured by these artists forever be etched in your
memory, reminding you of the boundless beauty that exists in the world around us.
With heartfelt gratitude and warm wishes,
Pho
HIDDEN CITIES
Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he
describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars
does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity
than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.” So begins Italo Calvino’s
compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla,
which “has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise
vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors
should be,” the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be
that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating fine
details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting
some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.
© WIKIPEDIA
ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) was an
Italian journalist and writer of short stories
and novels. His best known works include
the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959),
the Cosmicomics collection of short
stories (1965), and the novels Invisible
Cities (1972) and If on a winter’s night a
traveler (1979). Lionized in Britain and
America, he was, at the time of his death,
the mosttranslated contemporary Italian
writer.
FELTRINELLI
PRIZE FOR
LITERATURE
-ITALO CALVINO
“If they are forms, they are also like signals condensing in themselves power that
awaits its translation into form. And Calvino’s book is like no other know.”
-THE NEW YORK TIMES
“It’s hard to imagine a more authentic travelogue than Calvino’s work of fiction.”
-LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
Printed in South Korea
Jacket Illustration by Pho Vu
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
PUBLISHING COMPANY
an acquisition of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
© 1974 by Harcourt Brace & Company
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