Las imágenes de Giorgio Dellacasa, pertenecientes a la segunda generación de fotógrafos occidentales que arribó a la isla entre finales del siglo pasado y nuestros días –entre los que se encuentran Martin Parr y, sobre todo, Alex Webb– se inscriben plenamente en la denominada fotografía callejera, o eso podría parecer. Sin embargo, el condicional es obligado, ya que es preciso incluir ese instinto de viajero auténtico que mueve al ser humano a la comprensión y la inclusión, al tiempo que rehúye toda forma de depredación, incluida la depredación visual de la que a menudo está impregnada la fotografía callejera.
Así, en los breves textos autógrafos que acompañan el libro y lo transforman idealmente en una especie de cuaderno ilustrado y nos permiten adentrarnos en los entornos neurálgicos y periféricos de la capital de una manera no invasiva.Empezando por el título, en el que se habla de intercambio de miradas– se trata realmente de una conversación y no de un monólogo, con todos los matices que, aplicados a la gramática fotográfica, sugieren una conversación amistosa.

Las luces suaves o filtradas pulen los tonos e invitan a la intimidad; las amplias y nítidas zonas de sombra marcan quizá un silencio impenetrable, estableciendo un límite a nuestra presunción; la proximidad o distancia con los individuos, así como sus gestos, miden el espacio de interlocución y admiten distintos grados de confianza. Además, al estar presentes en varias imágenes, los encuadres semisubjetivos o «naturales», como los definía Luigi Ghirri, además de guiar la mirada, nuevamente actúan como elementos discursivos, ya que introducen breves pero agudos comentarios al diálogo.

En definitiva, Giorgio Dellacasa no habla de La Habana, habla con La Habana.

(desde la introducción de Laura Manione)

Photographs of well-composed objects, but with something odd, which makes them like surreal and extravagant toys. However, without any dramatic tension, without any disturbing atmosphere. Even the black and white seems subtle. And the composition is balanced, perfect, as only a master of still life, which Mario Cucchi undoubtedly is, can do. Even the title, C’est la vie, has something merry, but with a bitter hint.

(from the introduction by Gigliola Foschi)

The city that Giuliana Mariniello chooses to depict, in fact, is the one that the eyes perceive: characterized by scaffolding covered with tarpaulins decorated with advertising images or by reproductions of the hidden architectural structure; it is the space punctuated by billboards placed against the background of the buildings; it is public vehicles disguised with decals. Her photographic transcription of this environment, which we almost always perceive unconsciously and without committing ourselves to look in order to understand, is reinterpreted through a selective framing and with the judicious use of the Matisse tradition of  à plat, so as to radically transform the proxemic relationships between the things represented and to arouse new meanings, frequently full of irony.

(from the introduction by Massimo Mussini)

There are places where the past and the present meet and almost merge into a plot whose charm is hard to resist. The rain wets the car wind shield with small, boring drops, transforming it into a screen on which the images flow in black and white full of an ancient attraction. The photographer's gaze crosses it to linger on a landscape whose geometric rigour he captures: the bridge that defines the horizon has the imposing solemnity of a church facade but the image becomes dynamic in the lower part crossed diagonally as it is by the line of the parapet that runs along the Naviglio. Today the rare passers-by pay a distracted glance to that iron, those tie rods, those bolts. Yet these elements still retain the signs of an ancient civilization where iron represented modernity, the strength that knew how to resist the ravages of time, the challenge to the future, the same audacity that still characterizes the arches of the railway stations. Andrea Calestani approaches the Navigli with the curiosity of someone who has already experienced Milan in distant years but who is now rediscovering it when faced with places he had never visited.

(from the introduction by Roberto Mutti)

Susanne Martinet proposes an inexhaustible research work. The body, embodied, lived, discovers, feels, vibrates. For me it was an awakening, on the surface and in the bowels. It requires a constant presence, listening and willingness to meet, with oneself and with the other, be it an object, a material or a person.
The rigor that Susanne requires during her work allows access to a complex dimension, which holds limits and possibilities together, a practice of feeling, of knowing that needs its own time. It becomes research, which never ends, which holds different languages together, for this very reason it requires an awareness above all in detail.
One detail changes everything, Susanne tells us.
The photographs were taken during the summer internships and meetings; I, a student, felt the need to snap, to stop what I felt and lived with my body, with my whole being. They are images that attempt a balance between inside/outside, trying to connect the inside with the outside.
They have no intention of defining, of cataloging, but of opening up a possibility of reading, a point of view.
The idea of the project, born and shared in a choral dimension, evolved into a book. We felt the need to broaden our research: Susanne's work is Susanne herself, every detail tells about her and how every shape, object, movement of light is part of her sensitive gaze on the world, curious and open to amazement and how it is necessary to make it part of the narrative.
(from the introduction by Michela Liverani)

Juxtaposing elements from different realities was one of the cornerstones of the surrealist movement, which adopted Lautrément’s phrase – “the chance juxtaposition of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table” - as the manifesto of a new aesthetic based on disorientation and contradiction. By including remarkably incongruous objects in their works, these artists aimed to challenge our expectations, to free the mind from what it already knows and from automatic mental associations. Each of Fausto Meli’s photographs also contains an anomalous element; but in his case, it is neither particularly incongruous nor ostentatious. In fact, it is sometimes so unobtrusive as to be detectable only by paying close attention to the image. The unexpected elements in this artist’s works have a connection with what is shown in the photographs, (futuristic building, a castle on the sea, an old library, a volcanic island...); he creates encounters that have the power to generate new beauty, open up new meanings, new reflections...
(from the introduction by Gigliola Foschi)

The cutting of an image has an element of paradox: it forces us to come to terms with the materiality of somethng we instinctively deem intangible. John Mitchell, in his Pictorial Turn, dissolves this apparent contradiction when he distinguishes between images and pictures, arguing that "A picture appears on a material background or in a specific place. [...] An image never appears unless in a determined medium, but it also trasends media and can be transferred from one medium to another.".

It follows, therefore, that you do not make cuts in an image, but rather, a picture. But adjusting or touching a picture inevitably means generating new images and this is the precise area the work of Colomba D'Apolito explores, pushing and challenging limits and possibilities. This process of cutting and cropping that works on the support not because of an ant-modern stance, but because of an equally precise choice of field.
(from the critical text of Enrico Gullo, Art Historian and PdD in art history)