Adriano Mercurio, Sickily

Sickily

Adriano Mercurio

Publisher
89books
Year
2026
Specifications
Softcover
14.5 x 21 cm
92 pages
59 color photographs
Digital print
Text by Adriano Mercurio
Design by Adriano Mercurio

While official narratives strive to crystallize Sicily into an eternal postcard, a sad reality exists that escapes the lens of tour operators. This mockuguide wants to show what remains when tourism marketing stops looking and urban planning abdicates to chaos. It’s an invitation to see the island not as we wish it were, but for how it courageously persists in its own abandonment. Following this inverted itinerary, the visitor is no longer a consumer of panoramas, but a witness of the violent dialogue between the splendor of the past and a present marked by illegal dumps and abandoned buildings. Lowly Planet guides experiment with the hybridization of document and artifice: in some photos, image modification is used to heighten or add symbolic elements, creating visions that oscillate between the real and the surreal. However, an impassable boundary separates artistic manipulation from testimony: the waste, the scraps, and the decay are always real. No algorithm had to invent the trash; it is already there, a protagonist of the landscape, proving that reality often surpasses technological dystopia.

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