BOOK

click on a place to start a London guided tour

London map fallen empire

Isle of Dogs Stratford Hackney barbican hampstead heath

“..CETTE BABILON, LE SEUL REFUGE DES INFORTUNES”

Who’s talkin about us: (reviews, listings, exotica, excetera)

from Arachne‘s review of FE:
“..The first question I asked myself when confronted with Abenavoli and Bocchetto’s work was ‘does Fallen Empire WANT us to get lost?’
It it seems that in its mishmash of places it is undeniably a documentation of being lost in somewhere huge. The placement of each disgruntled image next to another seems at first to be a response to the claustrophobic vastness of London. The depth of each picture on its own leaves us desperately searching for connections. Their images are at times beautifully composed of stark figures and shapes (sign posts which at first glance seem to point us in easily-followed directions), and at times strikingly messy (East-London tower blocks overgrown with weeds and vines). There are also timeless images of people – monochrome crowds juxtaposed with airy schoolgirls. Who am I kidding? Of course we are lost, and left questioning (as the final footnote reads) ‘where does this road lead?’
The comprehensive footnotes further allow us to slide into the mess of cultural references that is London. Flicking back and forth between pages as we follow Roman numerals, we see that Fallen Empire has a structure which mirrors its content. I feel like adding my own cultural references and becoming a 1930s detective, trying to find the meaning of some sick game. Fallen Empire plays David Hemmings in Blow Up, magnifying parts of its images, drawing our attention to lonely figures caught on CCTV. They look guilty. I am (as usual) searching for meaning in a huge mess of insinuated ideas.”

 

From Ben’s review on IainSinclair’s website

“fallen empire have “day jobs” to pay the bills, but they are artists, photographers, writers, aspiring psychogeographers, italian expats, emigrants, immigrants, and they have just published their first book. a collection of photographs to recap their story in london so far, the dreams, the clash with the harsh reality, the choice to use a media considered at least anachronistic, film, paper, to perform all steps, photographing, developing, printing, exhibiting, writing, publishing, distributing.
In an era of digital photography, alex and valentina have chosen to swim against the tide using traditional methods which remind me of that italian tradition of craftsmanship.

as alex arrives, we’ve just finished our dinner and he goes straight for an “amaro”, the closing of italian meals, followed by a beer – an almost lethal combination, until finally valentina arrives and imposes on him half of a pizza.

despite we’ve lived 7 years in london, this book is for us a trip in unchartered territory, and the experience reminds me of reading Lights out for the territory before moving to London, while living in Germany, and having to imagine all the places described by Iain Sinclair in the book: watching these photograph is a trip in a world that although photographed out there in this metropolis, is an imaginary world, because we are looking at it through alex+valentina’s eyes.

there is so much to discover about each photograph, that we can just scratch the surface, it’s soon time to go, even this italian restaurant must eventually close on this Saturday night and Valentina must go to work at 10am next day.

we take our copies of the book to bring to Italy and Germany as an exotic prey from a safari in this metropolis whose lights burn at night like a vast bonfire.