Distant Close-Ups

Massimo Vitali has always made his books as large as possible, to create ample space for the sweeping views of his photography-images which grow as editioned prints to sizes up to 4 meters wide. Yet even at such generous proportions, there are limits to the details we can see in the pages of his books. Much remains impossible to decipher: the figures in the background, the specificity of a gesture or gaze. Distant Close-Ups remedies this predicament, providing both new sight and insight into Vitali's work. Following Entering a New World. Photographs 2009-2018 (Steidl, 2019), the book comprises classic Vitali images made in 2019-23 of waterside recreation, alongside series of people before Florence's Duomo and swarms of concertgoers. The photographs are shown as full-page spreads, and after the main sequence again in close-ups from these images-unveiling as yet unseen details of the hundreds, sometimes thousands of figures Vitali captures in a single frame. And now the revelation: the precise moment a diver's hand breaks the water's surface; the unconscious movements of dancers; the ambiguous, self-absorbed expression of a swimmer, floating at dusk, her eyes skyward-unaware that Vitali, and now we, can see.