Italy Observed in Photography
and Literature
by Luigi Ballerini and Charles Traub
New York: Rizzoli, 1991
Luigi Ballerini and Charles Traub take us out of the confines of Venice and spread all of Italy at our feet. They also take us from the world of fantasy to the world of perception.
The authors present famous travelers' observations of the country and its people. Nathaniel Hawthorne celebrates the ruins of the mighty Roman Empire, while Henry Wadsworth Longfellow waxes poetic about the Eternal City itself. Other literary snippets include Emerson's complaints about Venice (he finds himself "always at sea" there), and Melville's complimentary but clipped view ("Rather be in Venice on rainy day, than in other capital on fine one." Sic)
But the beauty of this book lies in its photographic interpretation of the country and its people. Over half a hundred international and Italian photographs present their individual views ranging from gritty realism to neo-pictorialist romanticism. It is a photographic potpourri that delights, page after page.
Rifo, The Sun. Sunday, May 21, 1989