Herve Guibert, L’immagine fantasma, 2021

The first volume of the Lampi series is a classic of French literature and, at the same time, of the reflection on photography, translated for the first time into Italian: L’immagine fantasma by Hervé Guibert with an introduction by Emanuele Trevi. L’immagine fantasma, published now for the first time in Italian. Deliberately devoid of photographs, L’immagine fantasma recounts Guibert’s connection with photography: his first erotic photographs, a reportage on his mother whose image will never be revealed, the slow disintegration of a photo destined to wear out and die, and then images that are fantastic or intimate to the point of becoming invisible. On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the author’s death and of the fortieth anniversary of the first edition of this book, L’immagine fantasma offers an occasion to get to know Guibert’s reflections, still extremely topical and penetrating today, on the relationship between photography, writing and personal life.

The book is not a theoretical text but a collection of stories that explore, through personal adventures, the different types of photography: family, travel, passport photos, Polaroids, pornographic or judicial photography. An engaging, intimate and profound writing, born in a season of new attention to photography and almost a commentary on Roland Barthes’ La camera chiara (1980), of which it seems a sort of literary continuation.