Il Mezzogiorno. Photo Uli Weber

In this volume, the internationally renowned photographer Uli Weber presents an intense tribute to Southern Italy: a journey through images that unfolds from Sicily to Sardinia, Puglia and Abruzzo, expressing the strength of the contrasts that make Southern Italy unique.

Glimpses of absolute harmony coexist with signs of disharmony and abandonment; unspoiled natural landscapes alternate with anthropogenic and urban traces. It is in this precarious and fascinating balance that Weber establishes his poetic signature, capable of transforming landscape into emotion and revealing its symbolic dimension.

His photography moves beyond tourist clichés to present a contemporary Grand Tour, an iconographic account that invites us to look below the surface, to grasp the deep bond between people and their environment. The absolute protagonist is light, which at times etches reality with surgical precision, at others envelops places in dreamlike atmospheres.

Accompanying the images are texts by Dame Helen Mirren, the Oscar-winning actress and active supporter of the association Save the Olives, which is active in Puglia in opposing the devastation of centuries-old olive trees caused by Xylella, and Denis Curti, historian and critic of photography, who offers the keys to interpreting a work suspended between poetry and testimony. Part of the proceeds of the volume will be used to support the activities of Save the Olives, making a concrete contribution to the preservation of a unique natural and cultural heritage.

Uli Weber was born in Germany and trained in Rome. He lives in London and Italy. A master of fine art and portrait photography, he has exhibited in major museums and galleries such as the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Saatchi Gallery. The author of volumes such as Portraits (2010), Goodwood Revival (2014) and The Allure of Horses (2018), he has held exhibitions in many parts of the world. In 2024 he published Dive & Madrine with Electa and Cinecittà, which won second prize at the International Photography Awards 2025 (IPA) in the category of photo books.

Bilingual volume in Italian and English.