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Thinking like an Island
Gabriele Chiapparini + Camilla Marrese

£48

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 consider 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.

FIRST EDITION Softcover, 17 x 22 cm portrait
224 pages across four integrated books (two sized 17×10.5 and two sized 8.4×22 cm)
Section-sewn, exposed bindings; foil on printed paper covers + spine
193 illustrations including photographs, archival images and drawings
Text by Gabriele Chiapparini and Camilla Marrese
Published October 2024 | ISBN: 9781738130016

See also: Thinking like an island: Print Edition

Description

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.

Book concept + design by Tiffany Jones

The Author

Gabriele Chiapparini (b. 1980, Italy) and Camilla Marrese (b. 1998, Italy) are an artistic duo working mainly through photography. Bringing together their backgrounds as film director (Gabriele) and graphic designer (Camilla), they strongly believe in collaboration as a path to transform and process individual thinking into matter for collective elaboration. In this process, they aim to use photography as a tool to visually articulate – rather than answer – complex questions. 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). Their work has been recipient of the PhMuseum Criticae prize (2022), and a finalist of the Luigi Ghirri Prize (2024).

instagram.com/gabrielechiapparini
instagram.com/camillamarrese

Reviews + Press

“In Thinking like an Island, Chiapparini and Marrese present identity as something never fixed—it shifts and adapts, a vertiginous dance between the forces of isolation, connection, and the deep human need to belong.”Andrea Copetti, Tipi Bookshop

“Presented as four separate booklets bound together in a single cover, ‘Thinking Like an Island’ has no set narrative or sequence – each encounter with the book is different from the last. What emerges from these combinations and recombinations is a sense of physical and psychological isolation, and of histories, geographies and identities mutually entangled and suspended somewhere between fact and fiction.”Eugenie Shinkle, C4 Journal

“One must be ambidextrous in opening this beautifully and cleverly crafted book about a mysterious island by the creative duo, Chiapparini & Marrese. Their creation provokes the viewer to engage in a visual and mental jigsaw puzzle with psychological overtones.”Michael Honegger, Lenscratch

See more:
Lenscratch review by Michael Honegger
CNN Style feature
The Guardian
Tipi Bookshop review by Andrea Copetti
Then There Was Us, review by Josh Bright
L’Œil de la Photographie (FR)
Noice magazine
lelitteraire (FR)

Special Notes

*Winner – ArtsLibris-Banco Sabadell 2024 AwardBarcelona
*Lensculture Favourite Photobooks of 2024, selected by Giuseppe Oliverio, Founder and Director, PhMuseum
*25 Recommended Photobooks of 2024, selected by Mireia Alises of Photo Art Books
*Favorite Photobooks of 2024 selected by What Will You Remember?
*Favourite Photobooks of 2024, selected by Andrea Copetti, Tipi Bookshop
*Christmas 2024 Photobooks Wishlist, selected by Galerie & Librairie Écho 119
*Selected Gift Recommendations 2024, IACK Japan
*Selected books of November 2024, Photo London Book Club
*Recommended title by Photobookstore UK
*Recommended title by IACK Japan

Events 2024
19 December 2024, 6.30-9pm – Book Presentation and signing at PhMuseum Lab in Bologna
14 December 2024, 6pm – Book Presentation and signing at Leporello Books in Rome
9 November 2024, 12pm – Book Launch and signing at Polycopies in Paris, Concorde Atlantique
14 November 2024, 6pm – Book launch and signing at Tipi Bookshop, Brussels

The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge support provided by The Italian Cultural Institute in London, and Mistral Sailing
Italian Cultural Institute London