Lunario is a collection of Guido Guidi's photography taken over a thirty-year period. The book takes its name from a traditional farmer’s almanac and pulls together numerous themes under the guise of the moon.
Although the moon is seen as symbol of melancholy and transience, even of madness, there is also an inherent playfulness to the photographs. For instance, Guidi’s early experimentation with a fish eye lens, a woman’s face shown rounded and distorted (perhaps as a kind of reimagining of the man in the moon) and the parallels he draws between the vastness of space and a child playing with a ball in the garden.
The moon is also shown through its cycles of waxing and waning in a way that evokes the images Eadweard Muybridge created. Yet rather than considering the imperceptible stages of human movement, the photographs revel in the idea of slowness and determination. The book culminates in the partial solar-eclipse of 11th August 1999.
Guidi draws links between his orbital studies, the lunar cycle and human terrestrial activity, creating correlations between the quasi-scientific and alchemic with oblique references to ritual and farming. The book is also a mediation on his own practice: the sequence of idea, observation and photographic process.
As a project, Lunario distills the same almost child-like wonder that is expressed at the end of Ted Hughes’ poem ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’. "‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’ / The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work / That points at him amazed."
Lunario is published by MACK and is available here.
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