Photobook Mania 06 / Camilla Marrese and Gabriele Chiapparini present Thinking Like an Island

About the event

The sixth appointment of Photobook Mania will take place on Thursday 19 December at PhMuseum Lab. Photographers duo Camilla Marrese and Gabriele Chiapparini will present Thinking Like an Island, published by Overlapse.

The Island is distant in the Mediterranean sea, and 675 metres in height. It’s inhabited by an uncertain number of 30 to 60 people, year-round, with no hospital, no cars, no priests or police. Some islanders never considered leaving while others tried, only to return to their lives in the remote bubble. There are untold stories, complex family trees, and historical lore surrounding the community existing on loaves of hallucinogenic-laced bread.

Bound into an ‘unconventional’ book structure, Thinking like an Island reflects on a geographical, social and temporal space, on a system and its moveable logic. Avoiding the typical representation of an island as utopia or dystopia, this work looks at the continuous process of identity construction; clash and coexistence, choice and confinement, innovation and resistance. The experience proves to be stratified, plural and dense; a vertigo of increasing complexity.

As our economic and social systems prove less sustainable, Chiapparini and Marrese ask if the island, where everything is reduced to minimum necessity, could be an idealistic model for surviving the crises that engulf us. Their work includes diary extracts, quotes from residents of the island, and exploratory photographs of mysterious landscapes and portraits. The book takes a poetic, philosophical approach to comprehending the wider world through the perspective of a solitary microcosm.

Some copies of the book will be available to be purchased and signed by the authors.

Bio

Camilla Marrese (b. 1998, Italy) and Gabriele Chiapparini (b. 1980, Italy) are an artistic duo working mainly through photography. Bringing together their backgrounds as film director (Gabriele) and graphic designer (Camilla), they believe in collaboration as a path to transform and process individual thinking into matter for collective elaboration. Their book Thinking like an island was published in 2024 by Overlapse. Their works have been exhibited at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven (NL), Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia (IT), Espaço Alto in San Paulo (BR), PhMuseum Lab in Bologna (IT), Spazio MAD in Magadino (CH), Focus Artphilein in Lugano (CH), Kranj Foto Fest (SI), Casa Testori in Milan (IT).

Admission to the event is free. For more information, write to us at info@phmuseumlab.com.