Milano

Giulia Pirelli
Milano

Photographs: Giulia Pirelli & Carlo Orsi

Text: Dino Buzzati

Publisher: Bruno Alfieri Editore

106 pages

Pictures: 54

Year: 1965

Comments: Hardcover with black cloth spine, 400 x 305 mm. First edition, 1965. Gravure printing. Text in italian. Beautifully designed by Giancarlo Liprandi. Copy have some wear, corners bumped and binding a little fragile but fresh copy. Reproductions very well preserved. Included in The Photobook by Parr & Badger, vol. 1. A collectible and scarce italian photobook.

The dramatic shift away from the somewhat grim 1950s neo-realism seen in the other (equally scarce) Milan book, by Mario Carrieri, currently on offer offers an object lesson in shifting period style. Though published only six years after Carrieri's monograph, Pirelli and Orsi present a slick, cosmopolitan city on the move, contrasting sharply with the former's lingering sense of post-war dread and deprivation. "In only a few years the angst of the 1950s had been replaced by the buoyancy of the 60s," Parr and Badger write, "though some might say that art suffered as a result. Nevertheless, this is a vibrant, energetic, sharp and covetable book, and if style tends to win out over substance, that was the 60s, that was."

(Eric Miles / Photoeye)