Two Thousand Light Years from Home is an immediately compelling object; the traditional structure of the book has been made as strange as the otherwise ordinary subjects of Mattioli’s photographs. The printed, folded sheet of each of the book’s signatures remains uncut on one edge; every page conceals an interior printed in a deep pink. Mattioli, a new father at the time, photographed a series of objects—fences, light posts, trees, each lit solely by a burst of flash—while strolling at night through his yard and along nearby streets. His meanderings, taken while his child slept, were constrained by the radius of his baby-monitor reception. The light-pink cover of the book is deceptively plain, with the title type marching around the cover’s perimeter much as Mattioli circumnavigated his neighborhood. The volume offers a completely non-narrative collection of images. The conceptual thread and the unusual material structure of the book hold it all together: a father, with a flashlight, seeking out and illuminating the things that lurk in the night.
Pietro Mattioli was born in 1957 in Zurich, where he lives and works as an artist and freelance curator.
Photographs by Piertro Mattioli
Designed by Winfried Heininger
Paperback
9 1/4 x 12 2/3 inches
144 pages
45 photographs
Published by Kodoji Press