This photobook represents the synthesis of years of reflection on oriental art and culture, culminating in a long journey to Japan on the footsteps of Shodo calligraphy discipline. Through a ruthless and independent eye, this story seeks to delve into the depths of a culture, exposing the most remote corners of things, in homage to Shinto animism that more than anything represents the key to these places. "Cuore velato" has a chiasmus structure and can be read in two directions, starting also from the end - as in Japanese way. It tries to discover a world, to understand it using its own categories: low profile, almost subdued. To discover this world, Barachini celebrates it and, at the same time, questions it, but its deep core -the heart- finally remains veiled anyway.
This book is the brother and the evolution of “Finchè tornerai terra” (about Ethiopia): similar formats, the same cardboard box, the same “in cage” vision.
CUORE VELATO
Veiled heart
Photos, design and handcrafted realisation by Valentino Barachini
Copywriting by Matilde Vittoria Laricchia
English translations by Massimiliano Barachini
100 copies numbered and signed
Paperback binding, 204 pages, 102 photos b/w.
Closed book’s dimensions: 16,5x22,5 cm
Languages: Italian and English
The book is housed in a white cardboard box together with a small issue hand-sewed with 34 photos in four colours.
The collectors’ edition adds a polymer photogravure on rice paper (16x22 cm; plate’s dimensions: 9x13 cm) printed in 30 copies numbered and signed.