Under Old Stars: Wanderings in Italian Hill Towns
Mauro Marinelli and Rob Lloyd
Through black and white images and prose sketches you discover a world largely lost today, among people deeply at home with their old ways, in remote hill towns in south-central Italy. Mauro Marinelli’s stark, yet lyrical, photographs reveal the beauty and wonder in small things – a foot on the stair, sunlight on a wall, the flower pot atop a confessional. His unsentimental and intriguing portraits invite us deep into the lives of people time forgot. Rob Lloyd’s sensual and meditative prose sketches include historical reveries, street scenes, snippets of overheard conversations, and private moments, real and imagined. His vignettes of village life stand both apart from and together with photographs to provide a dreamscape of a disappearing past.
96 images in black & white. 128 pages. Hardcover.
Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag. November 2016.
ISBN 978-3-86828-705-9 / EUR 35,00 / US$ 40.00
Selected Reviews
Among the Humans: Photographer Mauro Marinelli’s new book
Mauro Marinelli is a Renaissance guy: an artist, a photographer with credits in Newsday and the New York Times, a cook, a one-time novitiate, a farmer of organic culinary herbs, and the owner of a successful contracting business.
Ithaca Times
After 35 years between his first and second books of photography being published, Manhattanville alumnus Mauro Marinelli ’77 wasted little time in releasing his third, “Under Old Stars: Wanderings in Italian Hill Towns,” due out in November of 2016 just two years after “Burden of Wings.”
Inspired by his uncle’s dreams of his childhood in Italy, Marinelli travelled through the small, hill towns of south-central Italy with writer Rob Lloyd to bring out the essence of these locations, in his black and white photographs and Lloyd’s prose sketches for “Under Old Stars.”
At a time when the Census headcount shows that the largest metropolitan areas are growing at far higher rates, the prognosis does not look good for small towns, which continue in steady decline as young people chase bigger dreams in cities. It’s a trend consistent across America and around the world that shows no signs of slowing down.
“Under Old Stars" takes us on a journey
“Under Old Stars takes us on a journey to a place that is clearly Italy, but it might also be Ireland, France, Croatia, Greece, China—wherever our forebears came from. Words and photographs, both of them beautiful and austere, beckon us through innumerable doors into this village beyond time, and the world that our immigrant ancestors left comes to life before our eyes. It’s a work that is powerful and gentle, with meaning for us all.”
Sean Kernan
Photographer
Under Old Stars: Wandering in Italian Hill Towns allows readers to wander too
Under Old Stars: Wandering in Italian Hill Towns allows readers to wander too, to journey with our eyes like insiders through Italian hill towns, to peer into hidden corners and shy faces through the artful photos of Mauro Marinelli and the compelling prose and poetry of Rob Lloyd. The photographs are tender, fierce, gorgeous and wry. These crisp black-and-whites remind us of the magic of light and shadow, they let us see more clearly and imaginatively through the eyes of a master photographer. Pair these with the artful narrative entries of Rob Lloyd and readers feel that we too are strolling through hidden country towns, seeing details and vistas with extraordinary lenses. Add to this Lloyd’s rhythmically perfect, startling poems and you have bonus beauty––“gravy,” as Raymond Carver might have said. This is a perfect gift book, but you won’t want to give it away.
Marilyn Kallet
Author
One could say Italy is as much a feeling as it is a place
“One could say Italy is as much a feeling as it is a place and Mauro Marinelli’s photographs are full of that feeling. A major work on an ancient culture . . . seen through the eyes of today. Bravo!”
Ralph Gibson
Photographer
“Under Old Stars" is a masterful interweaving
“Under Old Stars is a masterful interweaving of Mauro Marinelli’s black and white photographs and Rob Lloyd’s prose sketches depicting images of a harsh world of Italian hill towns that seem unchanged for hundreds of years. Stone houses, stone streets, and long vistas across wide valleys to snow-capped hills: this blend of words and pictures results in a stark and uninviting beauty, where hardship carves its story into the faces of its people and even the dogs wear dour expressions. But beautiful it is, and one feels nothing but admiration and wonder for the men and women who make their lives among such fierce stones.”
Stephen Dobyns
Poet and Novelist
beautiful and evocative
“A beautiful and evocative book with some of the most exquisite prints I’ve ever seen.”
Alan Arkin
Actor
