A Different Beauty  presents a body of over two hundred images by Emiliano Mancuso, revealing his photographic sensibility, offering a comprehensive overview of the themes he has explored over the years, and also showcasing his technical experimentation (black and white, color photography, snapshots, and the use of digital and analog photography). 

Italy is the book’s undisputed protagonist, represented from an economic, political, and social perspective, through the stories of individuals but also through regional and localized episodes or the major events that have affected the country in recent years. Mancuso’s photographic lens focuses on everyday reality, observing the urgent socioeconomic problems of the peninsula (from minimal pensions to hydrogeological instability), giving us “images in which theme, style, and the responsibility of the gaze seek a new balance and a different beauty” (Domenico Starnone).

The book is divided into three sections that chronicle the progressive development of the various projects Mancuso has worked on: Terre di Sud, Stato d’Italia, and Il diario di Felix. In 2003, the photographer—at the dawn of his career—set out to document Southern Italy. This resulted in Terre di Sud, an early work influenced by street photography, whose protagonists are chance encounters, candid photographs, everyday life, and people on the street. This first documentary experience gave Mancuso the idea for a new project spanning the entire country. He thus dedicated himself to Stato d’Italia, which documents the economic crisis of 2008. In these pages of the book, we encounter the laborers’ revolt in Rosarno; the stories of the suburbs from North to South; the phenomenon of landings in Lampedusa; and scenes of everyday life. Unemployment, marriages, poverty, and children. The final section of the book is dedicated to the experiments of recent years. Mancuso began reporting on Casa Felix, a group home in the eastern suburbs of Rome. The project Felix’s Diary culminates in a documentary film, a true choral novel composed by the children of the foster home themselves, with their stories of petty crime and adolescent problems.

A Different Beauty,  a Zona project conceived and curated by Renata Ferri, collects and organizes the work of Emiliano Mancuso, a photographer who passed away prematurely in 2018 at the age of 46. The book presents a representative selection of Mancuso’s entire photographic and cinematic output, with the addition of an interview and a text by the curator, a piece by the photographer, and commentary by Lucia Annunziata, Giovanna Calvenzi, Domenico Starnone, and Valerio Laurenti. 

16 x 22 cm 
220 pages
276 photographs approx. in b/w and colour 
hardback                                                                                                      Edit by ContrastoBooks
Curated by: Renata Ferri