‘Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada, this is a book that I can really learn something from.’
Jim Goldberg, Magnum Photos
‘Spada’s book – self-published, stapled together, a brilliant combination of the roughhewn with the exquisite – is a memorial for a dead girl, a cri de coeur for vulnerable young women and a penetrating examination of the social ills resulting from a corrupt and rotten political system.’
Martin Parr / Gerry Badger, A History of Photobooks Vol. III, Phaidon
“At first glance, Gomorrah Girl may seem to be an unassuming even haphazard book, but as each page unfolds, the viewer is challenged by layers of meaning.”“This is a moving book of photographs and documents that one wants to return to repeatedly,” says Himes, (Head of International Photographs at Christie’s), describing what made the book a winner.
Darius Himes, Christie’s International Photographs, TIME Magazine
And yet these are not mere reportages, but combine truth and storytelling, diary and theatre, both candid and staged photography. They are cinematographic fiction raised to the level of judiciary truth. And vice versa.
Francesco Zanot, Curator
"I am nothing" by Valerio Spada is an impressive work because it shows us the silence, the penetration of crime in everyday life and our failure or inability to defend ourselves.
Roberto Saviano
Shot at Schaubühne Theatre in Berlin
Kanye West Monologue on social media / Costumes John Block
Directed by Valerio Spada
Duration: 3'29''
521 W 26th St, Floor 2, New York, NY, USA
March 7th - May 24th, 2019
MASSIMO VITALI / VALERIO SPADA / DOMINGO MILELLA
commissioned by Museo dell'Opera del Duomo di Firenze for 600 years
of Filippo Brunelleschi building Duomo of Florence
2023 TBA
LightBox presents a special preview of the season’s best photography books. In an age when so many of us experience photography almost exclusively on digital screens, these beautifully produced publications, from publishers large and small, proudly embrace the power of print and keep the brilliant tradition of the photobook very much alive.
- TIME Magazine Lightbox Best Summer Books
We also find “Gomorrah Girl” by Valerio Spada, which recounts the story of the suburbs of Naples, alternating material from the police dossier on the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl, killed by crossfire in a shootout, and images of the neighborhood where the girl lived. [...] Self-publishers have shattered the rules of traditional publishing, which were very much tied to the standards imposed by big names like Taschen and Steidl. They introduced innovations both in terms of the themes that were presented and the form of the book object,” Ceschel explains. The physical appearance of the publication became an integral part of the narrative. The quality of paper, graphics, binding, printing techniques. They were young people who thought about books in a different way. It was an experience that certainly ended up influencing mainstream publishing as well. Today, even if the trend is that of the book “a la Michael Mack”, which is very clean and classic, we see certain experiments in books published even by more established and official entities. The language of the photographic book has changed forever.”
- Bruno Ceschel interview by Luca Fiore - Il Foglio, January 2022
Opening: Feb 24 - Feb 28, 2021
TWIN PALMS PUBLISHERS BOOTH
"I am nothing" by Valerio Spada is an impressive work because it shows us the silence, the penetration of crime in everyday life and our failure or inability to defend ourselves.
- Roberto Saviano, Author of Gomorrah, Zero zero zero
Valerio Spada fotografa la mafia come nessun altro sa fare
Il suo lavoro documenta l’impatto del crimine organizzato in Italia, ma in modo diverso da tutti gli altri reporter.
- iD Magazine
‘Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada, this is a book that I can really learn something from.’
- Jim Goldberg, Magnum Photos
‘Spada’s book – self-published, stapled together, a brilliant combination of the roughhewn with the exquisite – is a memorial for a dead girl, a cri de coeur for vulnerable young women and a penetrating examination of the social ills resulting from a corrupt and rotten political system.’
- Martin Parr / Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, Vol.III – Phaidon
“At first glance, Gomorrah Girl may seem to be an unassuming even haphazard book, but as each page unfolds, the viewer is challenged by layers of meaning.”“This is a moving book of photographs and documents that one wants to return to repeatedly,” says Himes, (Head of International Photographs at Christie’s), describing what made the book a winner.
- Darius Himes, Christie’s International Photographs, TIME Magazine Lightbox
David Senior (MoMa NYC Librarian and curator) + Bruno Ceschel (curator) book SPBH: A DIY Manual and Manifesto, recently awarded with PDN Best Book 2016 and featuring best selfpublished books selected by Senior and Ceschel. [An accurate measure of SPBH’s importance to the contemporary cottage industry is the array of photobooks they have featured that I would cite as contemporary classics. These include Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada, about a girl growing up in the shadow of mafia violence in Naples]
- The Guardian
'Gomorrah Girl' and 'I am nothing' are the main series produced by the young photographer Valerio Spada. Thanks to the first series, he made himself known throughout the world in 2011, while he has recently brought the second to a close thanks to the support of a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation in New York. Both revolve around the study of the most typical and yet obscure aspects of the major Italian criminal organizations: the Neapolitan Camorra and the Sicilian Mafia. And yet these are not mere reportages, but combine truth and storytelling, diary and theatre, both candid and staged photography. They are cinematographic fiction raised to the level of judiciary truth. And vice versa.
- Francesco Zanot, Curator
Spada’s images of young women are highly charged; there is a tension at play, a sense that something is amiss. Allusions to childhood — Hello Kitty, Daisy Duck, oversized headbands and plastic jewelry – appear duplicitous in the company of his subjects. They do not feel like children; they appear sexualized and desensitized to the violence that surrounds and subsumes them. The faces of these teenagers are viscerally hardened, projecting austere personas developed for survival.
- Allie Haeusslein, Pier24 Gallery, Director