Paesaggi / Landscapes, by Emma Giammatei

In the age of the “omni-landscape” and the “Babel land”, Emma Giammattei writes clearly about the evolution – from the early 20th century to the present day – of the concept of landscape in depiction and legislation, and its place in Italian expertise and opinion. Her clarity is an antidote to the verbose theorising and media exploitation of images that are continuously illustrated and problematised. Discussions about the landscape have become the fixed background to threats to the environment, climatic issues, the crisis of Nature and of all the spaces inhabited by men, plants and animals. In the phase of “almost final things” – a current pessimistic description of the present – this book speaks to active readers uninterested in further theories, whether apologetic or apocalyptic, but hungry for concrete updates and a dialogic approach applied to new ways of collectively rethinking our future behaviour.

With contributions from Rosanna Tozzi, Arduino Colasanti, Luigi Parpagliolo, Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, René Grousset, Jeannine Auboyer, Osvald Sirén, Adriana Polveroni, Lucio Gambi, Paola Gregory, Riccardo Priore, Bernardo Rossi Doria, Vittorio Ingegnoli and Marc Augé.