Immagini Dal Rock
IMMAGINI DAL ROCK. HAND- TINTED PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE NEW WAVE / DISCO / PUNK /CLUB AND RECORD STORE SCENE IN ITALY CIRCA 1981.
This book is very special.
Immagini Dal Rock
is a photographic account of the youth culture scene in Torino in the years 1980-1982. Quite remarkably it was commissioned by the city authority itself as part of series of books on Turin. The photographer Dario Lanzardo was a local academic writer and photographic artist. At the time of publishing this book, he was 48 years old. Sadly he died last year.
This double page is nothing less than amazing. Photographs of naturally dark discotheques are always odd but the hand colouring more than compensates in this case.
Oh wow. An actual bedroom interior. A young man bent over on a single bed beneath a Pink Floyd poster. We have now run out of superlatives. It's a masterwork, obviously!
It is quite a bit better than might possibly be expected for a book published by a local government office. Lanzardo took his camera to record stores, discotheques, computer games arcades and music venues - then he took his black and white prints and hand-coloured them. The result is extraordinary. How good is the picture above? And you won't see a better set of pictures than these.
But could this be even better? This baby pink and powder blue panel treatment of Siouxie Sioux playing live in Turin is beyond inspired. It is so good it hurts to look!
A page of black leather jackets. A perfect closing image for what is an inspired book. A great work by a hitherto unheralded photographer. Not any more. Dario Lanzardo.