Photographic book
96 Pages
Printed in 2 colours on Gard Premium Natural 170 Gr paper with additional varnishing on photos. Cover printed in 1 colour on Gmund Colors Matt 23 300gr paper.
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65 photographs by Adriano Zanni
2 Illustrations by Davide Reviati
Text by Federica Angelini and Francesco Farabegoli
Project by Michele Buda for MBSF Studi Fotografici.
Printed by Grafiche Morandi in Fusignano (RA) nel febbraio 2019
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This is BM091
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Like a tree:

Mostly, it is about what had been before. Adriano Zanni's pictures are often backwards tales, possible endings. It was true for the pictures collected in Cosa resta, it is still true for this new book dedicated to trees. While people are discovering the practice of tree hugging or are going on trip to admire the spectacular colors of autumn "foliage", while trees are more and more taken as easy symbols of strength, beauty and consolation, Adriano shows us bare, dead, dying, fallen, black and white trees. Sometimes even plastic trees. Trees that seem to hide behind a wall; trees grown where trees should not be. His trees are solitary. And they do not look familiar or reassuring, they do not stand to embody life and knowledge, to convey the idea of protection and soundness; these trees are fragile, insecure, twisted. Just like our lives. You cannot look for a refreshing shade under Adriano's trees during summer heat, you cannot climb them for fun, neither you can pick their ripe fruits nor smell their flowers. To tell the truth, you would probably ignore them would you walk by them.
Instead, Adriano is asking us to stop, to take a long look at each of them and what happens is that we are soon overwhelmed by a sense of nostalgia, a sweet bitterness, a consuming melancholy, a inescapable wondering.
Trees have no choice: they have to grow in the place they were born. Is there a choice, instead, in our lives? Do immaterial roots force us to live like trees, maybe crooked trees without viable options?
Do roots and branches of our family trees restrain us? And to what extent?
Are we ready to pick the biblical fruit of knowledge, or are we scared to do it?
And is knowledge still representable by a tree, or do we need to think it more like a labyrinth or a rhizome? In that case, should we give new shape to our being in this fast and moving world?
Tree metaphors are rooted in the language our thoughts are made of.
And so, through a series of cross-references, collective thinking becomes individual introspection.
Just like in Adriano Zanni's music which is strictly interconnected with his pictures. Just listen to his soundtrack for Falling Trees. And listen to his Disappearing, whose cover shows a picture where trees become wood, ancestral place of fears, where you get lost, where you touch the oblivion for human beings.
One last, crucial, warning: under-the-track, as it often happens in Zanni's pictures, there is his anti-rhetorical, ironic angle reminding us that, in the end, we can either be human beings or trees. And no, it does not really matter.

Federica Angelini

Includes unlimited streaming of Adriano Zanni - Disappearing via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.