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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Mother and Daughter
Mother and Daughter
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Among the Humans: Photographer Mauro Marinelli’s new book
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An interview with Mauro Marinelli, starting at 5:24 in the timeline.
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. Read more…
“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.”
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.
“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!”
“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.”
“A beautiful and evocative book with some of the most exquisite prints I’ve ever seen.”
Angel Title
Angel Text
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Burden of Wings
Iconic cemetery images captured on Polaroid juxtapose the inherent contradictions of the immediate moment: instant and everlasting. In homage to the 16th century Dutch still life style of Nature Morte, the stone of mortuary sculptures softens like flesh and graveside tokens and bouquets of colorful flowers depict life becoming death. A weathered stuffed animal across a grave, little polished stones, toy soldiers frozen in action, rosaries, porcelain angels, plastic flowers, roses; touches of grief in bas relief.
Text and Photographs by Mauro Marinelli. Pre-Publication Comments by Sean Kernan.
Available for purchase at amazon.com.
By Patti Martin Bartsche
Mauro Marinelli never planned to photograph, much less publish a book, about cemeteries. And if he never found his way into Highgate Cemetery – at the urging of a friend – to visit the gravesite of Karl Marx, there is no question that “Burden of Wings” would never have existed.
But Marinelli did walk into the London cemetery more than six years ago, and what he saw captivated his artistic eye. “I remember walking through hundreds of rows (of gravestones) and admiring everything I saw. ” Marinelli recalled. “I knew there was a lot of stuff I could do here.”
Read more in the December 2015 Issue of American Funeral Director Magazine.
Burden of Wings is a book of photographs focusing on cemeteries, with a concluding essay on the subject of death by the photographer and author, Mauro Marinelli.
This is a lovely and melancholy book, poignant and contemplative.
Mauro Marinelli is a Renaissance person: 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 farm, and the owner of a successful contracting business.
Photographer Mauro Marinelli turned to polaroids to capture the cemeteries through which he found himself wandering. The nature of polaroids lends itself to glimpses rather than views, to details rather than landscapes of grief. Marinelli liked how the film softened edges and shadows, giving the grave sculptures a touch of myth. Read more at “Cemetery Travel: Adventures in Graveyards Around the World”
Wings May Be A Burden, but Photography Isn’t: Inside Manhattanville Alumnus Mauro Marinelli’s Journey
After Almost 40 Years Alumnus Releases Second Book of Photography
Mauro Marinelli ’77 is a dream chaser. Marinelli’s photography book, “Old Timers: The Italians,” was released in 1977, nearly 40 years later, he is now enjoying the success of his book, “Burden of Wings.” – See more at: http://www.mville.edu
A new art book for the cemetery enthusiast is out, one that captures the true essence of the graveyard as a gateway between the living and the dead, with inspirational shot after shot. Read more on A Grave Interest >
The most unique thing about Mauro Marinelli’s book of cemetery photography is the medium he selected to express himself. Rather than the traditional methods of film or digital photography, Marinelli chose Polaroid. The effect is spectral and poetic.
Read more at http://www.thecemeteryclub.com/book-reviews.html
The Burden of Wings by Mauro Marinelli illuminates the sacred threshold between life and death. Marinelli’s inspiring prose and photographs of stone cemetery statuary are portals to the underworld marking “the final goodbye that doesn’t wink to the future.”
Marinelli’s photographs and poetic reflections brought me to the time during my husband’s illness when I took daily walks in an old public cemetery near the hospital. Unfairness and outrage vanished in the presence of thousands of gravestones, many marking the death of children. Every life had a beginning and an end. My husband’s dying and mine were simply part of the natural cycle.
Marinelli’s intimate images are never depressing. Luminous wilted flowers and ethereal rays of light stand in contrast to the stillness of stone. Grave site offerings tell poignant stories of our human struggle to accept mortality and honor those we love. We feel the intimate personal love of a mother and the celestial uplift of angel’s wings. We remember to keep silence as we face the Great Mystery.
“In the cemetery I’ve come to touch my death,” Marinelli says. “Well, not really touch it; it’s more like … kissing through glass.”
Burden of Wings is an encounter, the kind of unexpected meeting that can change us. As we read it, time stops and we enter a twilight where we witness the longings and partings of so many others that are now past. The photographs have the glowof small il paintings, rendered in the inimitable Polaroid film that seems like a visual language made just for poetry. Wilted flowers drape over a marble hand, a naked granite infant nestles in the snow, stone lips meet in a kiss of full passion. And above it all, an angel hushes the clouds.
I knew about these photographs as they came together over the years, and I’m delighted to see their publication, but the surprise for me is the greatness of heart that is in the writing – so quiet, passionate…deep. Poets don’t usually work in two languages.
Words and photographs come together to make something greater than both,and I find a wisdom where I wasn’t looking. There is an aching in the work, which becomes a quiet joy, no unhappiness at all.
– Sean Kernan
The soft Polaroid photographs in Mauro Marinelli’s The Burden of Wings invite the reader into the cemetery setting through a ‘side door’. It can be difficult to look death straight on; the touches of sentiment among the grave markers are too intense and remind us of our own mortality. But, death informs us, if we allow it. That seems to be the point of Marinelli’s gorgeous photography and text. The cemetery can be a threshold, a precipice, a juncture of inquiry. What does this have to do with me, the one who is still physically present on the earth?
I love this book: the sentiment and photographs are exquisitely paired. The author’s writing is as powerful as the imagery. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gotten lost in this book.
– Lynne Staley
Grief Recovery Specialist, Life-After-Loss.
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Old Timers: The Italians
In OLDTIMERS, Mauro Marinelli, a young and gifted photographer, has preserved for us a vital part of our heritage. Our parents and grandparents, part of the wave of millions of European immigrants who came to America at the turn of the century, will not be with us forever. many of the are no more than familiar stories repeated at family gatherings. These pictures, living documents of a disappearing past, recall the touch of a hand, the taste of homebaked bread, a pair of high-buttoned shoes, a heavily accented word. The people in the pictures are Italian, but they could be of any ethnic group. The photographer was inspired not only by his own heritage, but by the dramatic Indian portraits of Edward S. Curtis, who documented the last days of another generation of vanishing Americans. With a similar eloquence, but with an emotion born of his own memories, Mauro Marinelli offers a tribute to tradition, to the oldtimers who remain a fragile link with our past, whose portraits will inspire our memories in the future.
Text and Photographs by Mauro Marinelli. Pre-Publication Comments by Ralph Gibson & Sean Kernan.
This title is out of print. Limited availability on amazon.com
There are two gifts for me in this work. I am being given Mauro’s love for these proud old strugglers, and i have been given the gift of watching him become a person who could find this love in himself and say it strongly. These pictures seem made of the simplest strokes. The photographer is transparent. There is no self-important straining, just affection and honor for those lives in the photographs.
– Sean Kernan
Marinelli gives us images that are as honest and direct as the peoplehe portrays. Thus the bond becomes fast and durable in his book and will add a a touch of immortality to these “oldtimers”. Having had the opportunity to observe this thisproject fro its inception to publication, I can fully accept the feelings which arise from it. And I respect and wonder about them.
– Ralph Gibson