Press

features, reviews, interviews, quotes

FEATURES AND REVIEWS

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Nikkei Asia, “Italy’s Belt and Road blues highlight hopes for rival India-Europe corridor”, Mailys Pene-Lassus, 2023

Antinomie, “Paesaggio come performance. La fotografia di Andrea Botto”, Riccardo Venturi, 2022

Quadriennale di Roma, “Studio visit”, Riccardo Venturi, 2022

Rolling Stone, “Di roccia, fuochi e avventure sotterranee”, Francesca Orsi, 2021

Dagospia, “Clic! Ogni buco è galleria”, Gabriele Neri, 2021

Il Sole 24 Ore, “Che bello finire nel tunnel!”, Gabriele Neri, 2021

Domus, “Are private commissions the future of authorial photography?”, Raffaele Vertaldi, 2021

Fotocrazia, “Sotto la pelle del pianeta”, Michele Smargiassi, 2021

Il Tascabile, “Di roccia, fuochi e avventure sotterranee”, Fabio Severo, 2021

Artribune, “Esce il libro fotografico dedicato al nuovo Ponte di Genova di Renzo Piano”, Angela Madesani, 2021

Hoepli, online presentation of the book “Reviviscenza. Un ponte su Genova” fotografie di Andrea Botto, 2021

Phom, “La carta bianca di Andrea Botto”, 2020

Espoarte, “Reviviscenza. Un cantiere irripetibile negli scatti di Andrea Botto”, 2020

Esquire Russia 173, “The Reef”, 2020

Il Venerdì di Repubblica, “Noi che abbiamo visto il ponte”, 2020

IGtv, “Andrea Botto KA-BOOM The Explosion of Landscape”, Luca Panaro, 2020

Spazi Fotografici, “Una domenica italiana. Riflessioni sull’uso delle immagini al tempo dell’isolamento”, interventi di Giorgio Barrera, Andrea Botto, Marco Citron, Filippo Romano, web talk, 2020

Graziadei Photography Award_2019 Contemporary Art Day, MAXXI Museum, Roma, panel, 2019

Bolzano EXPLO Bozen_International Conference on Explosives and Blasting, “Art and Explosives. Artistic research meets technology”, lecture, 2018

Alias/Il Manifesto, “Andrea Botto, dalla deflagrazione una diversa idea di paesaggio”, Daniele Capra, 2018

Centro Pecci Journal, “Apocalypse Now”, Włodek Goldkorn, 2016

Pagina 99, “La creativa distruzione che libera le città”, Lucia Tozzi, 2016

LUCANDREONI.COM, “Un immaginario già presente”, Luca Andreoni, 2015

We Heart, “TAKE COVER! Andrea Botto roams Europe armed with explosives and a camera — all in the name of art…”, Robe Wilkes, 2015

BBC Mundo, “El fotógrafo que retrata explosiones”, 2015

Der Greif Magazine, “Andrea Botto KA-BOOM”, Tiago Casanova, 2015

Atribune, “L’estate del 1945. In un libro d’artista firmato Andrea Botto”, Angela Madesani, 2014

A-N, “Top 10: the best photobooks of 2014”, Tim Clark, 2014

Photo-Eye, “Book of the Week: a pick by Andrea Botto”, 2014

Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation “PhotoBook Awards 2014 – First Photobook”, 2014

Photo-Eye, “Book of the Week: a pick by Nicolò Degiorgis”, 2014

Reminders Photobook Review #9, “19.06_26.08.1945”, Hajime Kimura, 2014

FrizziFrizzi, “19.06_26.08.1945, il ritorno a casa di un prigioniero diventa uno splendido progetto fotografico”, Simone Sbarbati, 2014

Fotografia Magazine, “KA-BOOM!”, Graziano Ferri, 2014

WIRED / Raw File, “A Photographer Obsessed With Controlled Explosions”, Jakob Schiller, 2014

Lens Culture, 2013

ZOOM Landscape special issue, Sara Namias, 2012

TIME Lightbox, “The 5th FotoBookFestival Dummy Award winners”, Jeffrey Ladd, 2012

Hippolyte Bayard, “Battlefields”, Fabio Severo, 2012

Orwell n.6, 2012

Il Riformista, 2012

3X3 Conversazioni sulla Fotografia, Fondazione Pierluigi e Natalina Remotti, Camogli, 2012

“KRONAKA. Viaggio nel cuore oscuro del Nord”, Stefano Nazzi, Ed. Laterza, 2011 (front cover)

Flash Art #290, 2011

Camera Austria #107, 2009

ArtApp #2, “L’occhio sul mondo di tre fotografi italiani”, Salvatore Ligios, 2009

Cahier 02, “The Photoresque: landscape and modernity”, Geert Goiris, 2009

Territorio / Avventure dello sguardo, “Goodbye Alps! Turismi contemporanei nelle Dolomiti”, Francesco Infussi, 2008

DK Architecture, 2007

GEO n. 12, “Addio alle Alpi”, 2006

Quaderni di AFT #16, “Lo sguardo imperfetto”, a cura di Emanuele Piccardo, 2003

Interviews

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Doppiozero, “Andrea Botto. Prove tecniche di fine del mondo”, Mauro Zanchi, 2024

Fotoinnesti (podcast), “Andrea Botto: viaggio al centro dello sguardo”, Laura Manione, 2023

Domusweb, “Andrea Botto, the photographer of explosions and demolitions”, Enrico Ratto, 2022

Il Fotografo n 328, marzo/aprile 2021, “Andrea Botto. Reviviscenza. Un ponte su Genova”, Gloria Viale, 2021

Rolling Stone, “Reviviscenza. Segni di memoria per un ponte su Genova”, Francesca Orsi, 2021

Tique, “Six Questions: Andrea Botto”, 2020

Leporello, “An Unexpected Influencer | Andrea Botto”, 2020

ATP Diary, “New Photography | Andrea Botto”, Mauro Zanchi, 2020

Photocaptionist, “Fotoromanzo Italiano in conversation with photo novel guru Jan Baetens”, 2018

American Suburb X, “Kaboom! Of Dynamite and Destruction”, Brad Feuerhelm, 2018

Foto Cult n. 147, “Il rabdomante”, Tobia Donà, 2017

Recover Magazine n. 34, “Click… Si demolisce. Quando l’immagine è tutto”, Massimo Viarenghi, 2016

ADtoday, “Obiettivo Architettura”, Sonia S. Braga, 2014

Hunger Magazine, “Andrea Botto: KA-BOOM”, Jordan Porteous, 2014

Pizza Digitale, “Le foto di Barbara – Andrea Botto”, Barbara Chloe Asnaghi, 2013

Urbanautica Photoschools, “Metadata#16: Andrea Botto”, Gaia Musacchio, 2013

Artribune Magazine, “Il futuro della Fotografia vol.II”, Valentina Tanni, 2013

LOLLOVE blog, “La fotografia indaga il paesaggio sardo. Lo sguardo da rabdomante di Andrea Botto”, Giaime Meloni, 2013

Hippolyte Bayard, “On documentary photography”, Fabio Severo, 2012

Landscape Stories, “Unstable Landscapes”, 2010

Quotes

"In addition to the design structure and the prediction of the final result, Botto is interested in the plastic potential of the image when trying to render the explosion as an ephemeral sculpture in the transformation of space. The photographic medium is involved not only as a device capable of capturing and prolonging the sculptural dimension of an explosion - beyond the capture of an instant that would otherwise escape perception in a more extended period of time - but also to deconstruct the visual celebration of the romantic sublime present in the landscape, through the passages of meaning between the three-dimensional world and two-dimensionality."

Mauro Zanchi

Art critic and writer

"If, at first glance, Andrea Botto’s work appears to be about demolition, then at second glance it has a meta-photographic quality. In other words, the images and the camera are self-reflexive; the visual work offers us an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the camera itself. (...) When we view these images, we participate in a dialogue between two chemical substances: firstly the photochemical reactions which allow the image to develop, crystallise and be printed, and secondly the dynamite that Alfred Nobel discovered in 1866. Two chemical processes which mirror each other: one creates, the other destroys; one goes click!, the other goes boom!. Two moments in time when a fusion creates an image."

Riccardo Venturi

Contemporary art historian and critic

"Botto’s work offers a kind of culmination point in which many of photography’s key functions and strengths converge. We see landscape photography, but what is being shown here is landscape at the moment of its transformation, dissolution, surrender – the deconstructive antithesis of the visual celebration of romantic sublimity. We experience photographic technology at its essence, in the capturing of an unreproducible moment that would otherwise elude our perception. And, of course, Andrea Botto’s photos are also documentations, the visual recording of the historical events a community of individuals would like to remember for generations."

Hans-Joachim Gögl

Curator

INN-SITU

"Andrea Botto’s images do not simply depict the reality of explosions but instead explode our reality capturing its uniqueness. The author seems to be telling us that there is the possibility as a collective to share a moment in time, instead of just watching our phone screens ignoring each other, while amplifying the reproduction of reality."

Ilaria Bonacossa

Director

Palazzo Ducale, Genoa

“Everything sways, shudders and cracks in Andrea Botto’s photographs, not just the concrete of the buildings or the faces of the mountains but also the unambiguousness of our position and the rules of the past. In offering a vision of reality, these photographs urge a reassessment of it.”

Francesco Zanot

Indipendent Curator

“What may first appear as straightforward records of blasts become more nuanced through a strange synthesis of staging and reality, as if they were pre-scripted performances for the camera or even the result of glitches in the images.”

Tim Clark

Editor in Chief / Director

1000 Words Magazine

“The use of large format on a subject caught in a very short time, if not instantaneous, characterizes the recent work of Andrea Botto called KA-BOOM. It may seem paradoxical to use a slow medium to describe an instant event as an explosion, but the outcome of this strategy allows us to access a new temporal and spatial dimension of the phenomenon of vision. (…) In this case we can then imagine a kind of theater of the real, which explores the boundary existing between staged photography and the classic documentary practice.”

William Guerrieri

Coordinator

Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea, Rubiera

“In Botto’s projects seems that the main concern is just to make clear, in the act of photographing, the moral and aesthetic values that underlie this practice, and perhaps also the anxieties that characterize it.”

Francesca Fabiani

In Charge of Contemporary Photography and International Relations

ICCD, Roma

“Botto’s image, taken during the production of a large-scale public work in the Padan plain, does not directly show the execution of the works, but rather, by taking advantage of the exceptional illumination necessary to carry them out, leads our attention to the houses of the locals. These latter are the passive spectators of the irreversible changes-in-progress to their landscape.”

Daniele De Luigi

curator

Galleria Civica, Modena

“In his nocturnal photographs, which are populated by astonished figures with blurred contours gazing up at huge bulldozers as they proceed with their demolition, the author captured the uneasy relationship between the new large-scale infrastructures and the old local road networks.”

Nicoletta Leonardi

Photography historian and Professor