In Tokyo Untitled D’Agostin isolates himself in the geometries of the Japanese city. He narrates his journey through his experience of the street, describing with the language of abstract images, charged of deep blacks and sharp edges. Dislocating subjects from their realities, D’Agostin depicts his perception of the space around him, the relationship between the city’s architecture and its people, and their interferences. This is emphasized in Tokyo, according to D’Agostin, where he has no reference or connection with the external world, and his sense of disconnection brings him to a discovery of the unseen.

“Tokyo Untitled” photographs bring me back to the destroyed Tokyo as it appeared right after the war ended. It may be totally impossible for young Renato to imagine that his “Tokyo Untitled” reminds me of such tragic images as Tokyo’s air raid attack which happened 64 years ago.
— Eikoh Hosoe.

These images are the thinnest possible slices of inconceivable urban density. Slices so thin that they must be measured in fractions of light, tiny microscopic moments of DNA in time taken from the huge archeology of a true metropolis.
— Ralph Gibson.

Afterwords: Eikoh Hosoe, Ralph Gibson
Publisher: MC2 Gallery Edizioni, Milan,
Printed in Italy, Amilcare Pizzi
Publication Date: November 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-88-904380-0-4
Design: Heartfelt Milan
Printrun: 2000
Hardcover, 88 pages, 23.8 x 33 cm
Available In English, Japanese, Italian, and French
Price: 45US$
Amazon.com
Photoeye.com

In 2007, I turned my attention to Japanese photography, which inspired me to explore what my point of view could be in a city so far from the world that had always surrounded me, but so close to the photographic imagery towards which I was addressing my attention. Longing to break the unconscious, immediate and easy processes of the known and the predictable, I traveled to Tokyo for the first time. I was immediately struck by a sense of disorientation and an inability to quickly locate my own position within the geography of the city. My lack of precise references to the external world created in me feelings of isolation and detachment from my previously known realities. I was bewitched by the essential and monochromatic geometric forms, so delicate and precise, of the experience of street life, where these forms cause sounds to fall into a deep silence, muffling the interaction between architecture and human figures. I was impelled toward a quest for the unseen, for details and hidden elements. My perception of this outside world lost all sense of time for me, revealing an essence described by a language of the surreal and the abstract. I returned to Tokyo in 2008 and 2009 to repeat the experience. Guided by the same quest, but with a greater awareness of the cultural separation, I let isolation become introspection. I sought to recreate this world that belonged to me, as it is reflected by the city’s reality, while appropriating images and moments that delineate the “me” within its boundaries. It has become my Tokyo. Tokyo Untitled represents a visual record of my journey to the “capital of the East” and its invisible elements diluted in visible everyday life.

The city as a place in which we live, work and love looses its physical dimension and becomes a place of pure emotion. Its buildings and streets become paths of reason and emotion similar and/or different wherever we happen to be. The images in the photograph are only signs, the warmth of emotions left on the ground or, in the words of James Hillman, the soul of places. In fact, a careful reader will immediately realise that the city, the places shot by the photographer, belong to completely different yet identical realities, because they are places that shimmer with feeling.

In his photographs, Renato portrays a place in which the mind searches for what we normally call the scraps of the soul and immediately transfers them into an oneiric dimension. The photographer participates and is intimately involved in the metahistorical development of the story: a series of images and tales that are not real but images of what we have called a parallel reality. This reality escapes our daily considerations to become the ecstatic revelation that some philosophers would call the vision of our third eye.

Preface: Ralph Gibson
Text: Renato Miracco
Publisher: Zeropuntozerozero, 2007. Printed in Italy
Design: Heartfelt Milan
Printrun: 1000
Hardcover, 84 pages, 16,5 x 23,5 cm
ISBN 9788890280801
Available in English, Italian
Price: 35US$
Amazon.com

From the text by Renato Miracco.
The city as a place in which we live, work and love looses its physical dimension and becomes a place of pure emotion. Its buildings and streets become paths of reason and emotion similar and/or different wherever we happen to be. The images in the photograph are only signs, the warmth of emotions left on the ground or, in the words of James Hillman, the soul of places. In fact, a careful reader will immediately realise that the city, the places shot by the photographer, belong to completely different yet identical realities, because they are places that shimmer with feeling. In his photographs, Renato portrays a place in which the mind searches for what we normally call the scraps of the soul and immediately transfers them into an oneiric dimension.
The photographer participates and is intimately involved in the metahistorical development of the story: a series of images and tales that are not real but images of what we have called a parallel reality. This reality escapes our daily considerations to become the ecstatic revelation that some philosophers would call the vision of our third eye.

Lucia Servadio Bedarida was born into a Jewish family on July 17 1900 in Ancona. In 1922 she graduates in Surgery and Obstetrics at the University of Rome becoming the youngest woman doctor in Italy. After marrying Doctor Nino Vittorio Bedarida in 1923, she works with him side by side at the hospital, first in Turin and then in Vasto. In 1939 she is forced to flee Italy because of the promulgation of the antisemitic racial laws, which were to be applied to her whole family.

«Be aware that you are being followed and they want to get you »
people would say to us.

After numerous and unsuccessful attempts to go abroad, she moves to Tangier, an international area in Morocco that harbours the Jews who flee Europe and allows them to practise their profession. In Tangier, Lucia works as a doctor for more than forty years and assists hundreds of women in giving birth to their babies. “Women come to me on the back of a mule” says Lucia who, being a woman doctor, enjoys the approval of the Moroccan mentality in practising her profession. In Morocco Lucia spends most of her life. The break with Italy is drastic, communication is impossible. After a few years, heartbreaking news arrives: her mother and grandmother were deported and killed at Auschwitz. Even through these terrible moments, Lucia never loses her faith and keeps up with her mission as a doctor. I must continue to work as a doctor.

«Too many people still need me here »

Only at 81 does she resolve to hang up her coat for good and reunite with her daughters, who had been sent to the States at a young age to continue their studies and start a career. She moves to Cornwall on Hudson, a small village one hour from New York City. Olivia Fincato and Renato D’Agostin meet up with her in her house on the Hudson river banks in March 2006. Lucia welcomes them with enthusiasm and forges with them a bond of deep trust right away. A month after the meeting Lucia Servadio Bedarida dies.

«Experiencing Lucia was an honor, even if for just one day. Lucia leaves a mark on our lives and teaches us that, after all, life can be beautiful and full of surprises at any age, even at one-hundred-and-six».

Authors: Olivia Fincato and Renato D’Agostin
Publisher: Zeropuntozerozero
Publication date: 2007
ISBN: 9788890280818
Design: Heartfelt, Milan
Printrun: 1000
Hardcover, 64 pages
Available in Italian, English, French
Price: 35US$

Lucia Servadio Bedarida was born into a Jewish family on July 17 1900 in Ancona. In 1922 she graduates in Surgery and Obstetrics at the University of Rome becoming the youngest woman doctor in Italy. After marrying Doctor Nino Vittorio Bedarida in 1923, she works with him side by side at the hospital, first in Turin and then in Vasto. In 1939 she is forced to flee Italy because of the promulgation of the antisemitic racial laws, which were to be applied to her whole family. «Be aware that you are being followed and they want to get you » people would say to us. After numerous and unsuccessful attempts to go abroad, she moves to Tangier, an international area in Morocco that harbours the Jews who flee Europe and allows them to practise their profession. In Tangier, Lucia works as a doctor for more than forty years and assists hundreds of women in giving birth to their babies. “Women come to me on the back of a mule” says Lucia who, being a woman doctor, enjoys the approval of the Moroccan mentality in practising her profession. In Morocco Lucia spends most of her life. The break with Italy is drastic, communication is impossible. After a few years, heartbreaking news arrives: her mother and grandmother were deported and killed at Auschwitz. Even through these terrible moments, Lucia never loses her faith and keeps up with her mission as a doctor. I must continue to work as a doctor. Too many people still need me here Only at 81 does she resolve to hang up her coat for good and reunite with her daughters, who had been sent to the States at a young age to continue their studies and start a career. She moves to Cornwall on Hudson, a small village one hour from New York City. Olivia Fincato and Renato D’Agostin meet up with her in her house on the Hudson river banks in March 2006. Lucia welcomes them with enthusiasm and forges with them a bond of deep trust right away. A month after the meeting Lucia Servadio Bedarida dies. «Experiencing Lucia was an honor, even if for just one day. Lucia leaves a mark on our lives and teaches us that, after all, life can be beautiful and full of surprises at any age, even at one-hundred-and-six».

The project was born on one of those sleepless working nights. The Zeropuntozerozero Edizioni team was looking for an alternative way to publish a special series of images of an iconic, surreal and mysterious New York in the dark. A Moleskine notebook was on the desk, the perfect support for a personal journey into the abyss of night. But something was missing. They were missing people — their observations, feelings, memories. So they decided to ask as many people as they knew the same question: What is Night for you?

In addition to the inspirations in the book, there’s still plenty of room for you to add your own perspective. This book has 70 blank pages for you to fill-up as you choose.

Curated and edited by Olivia Fincato
Photographs by Renato D’Agostin
Publisher: Zeropuntozerozero, 2008
Design: Tankboys
Printrun: 1000
Hardcover, 190 pages, 3.5 x 5.5 inches (9×14 cm)
ISBN 9788890280825
Price: 19.95 US$
www.zeropuntozerozero.com