Title: Gli Isolani
Artist: Alys Tomlinson
GOST Books
24 x 30 cm
118 pages + a foldout
51 images
Hardback clothbound
Design by GOST
Essay by Sabrina Mandanici
English & Italian
November 2022
ISBN: 978-1-910401-76-7
"Gli Isolani" (The Islanders) is the latest project by acclaimed British photographer Alys Tomlinson.
Tomlinson has spent the last two years exploring the lives of islanders in modern-day Italy, capturing little-known rituals and traditions inspired by paganism, fables and folklore. These almost theatrical images document traditional costumes and masks, preserved and handed down for generations, worn during festivities and celebrations in Sicily, Sardinia and islands of the Venetian lagoon. The project provides a meditation on place, faith and identity.
Her portrait photography is often characterised by the intensity in the gaze of her protagonists and the notion that every individual has an untold story, as seen in her previous bodies of work Lost Summer and Ex-Voto. The immediacy and timelessness of Tomlinson’s black and white photographs in Gli Isolani provide a connection between people and place, evoking curiosity in the viewer which prompts questions rather than providing answers
Tomlinson’s ongoing interest in anthropology and ethnography finds its perfect outlet in Gli Isolani where she reveals a mysterious and otherworldly existence in which past and present merge and cultural traditions converge.
In this series, Tomlinson continues to work on analogue film with a large format plate camera. The almost mythical images, set against wild and rugged landscapes, blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, artifice and nature and provide a rich visual language that reflects the complex history these lands have experienced.
- From the publisher's website
"Gli Isolani" (The Islanders) is the latest project by acclaimed British photographer Alys Tomlinson.
Tomlinson has spent the last two years exploring the lives of islanders in modern-day Italy, capturing little-known rituals and traditions inspired by paganism, fables and folklore. These almost theatrical images document traditional costumes and masks, preserved and handed down for generations, worn during festivities and celebrations in Sicily, Sardinia and islands of the Venetian lagoon. The project provides a meditation on place, faith and identity.
Her portrait photography is often characterised by the intensity in the gaze of her protagonists and the notion that every individual has an untold story, as seen in her previous bodies of work Lost Summer and Ex-Voto. The immediacy and timelessness of Tomlinson’s black and white photographs in Gli Isolani provide a connection between people and place, evoking curiosity in the viewer which prompts questions rather than providing answers
Tomlinson’s ongoing interest in anthropology and ethnography finds its perfect outlet in Gli Isolani where she reveals a mysterious and otherworldly existence in which past and present merge and cultural traditions converge.
In this series, Tomlinson continues to work on analogue film with a large format plate camera. The almost mythical images, set against wild and rugged landscapes, blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, artifice and nature and provide a rich visual language that reflects the complex history these lands have experienced.
- From the publisher's website
