Their names are Lewis Hine, Sebastião Salgado, Eugene Smith, Tom Stoddart and Igor Kostin, and they have tackled hunger, drought, ecological catastrophes, AIDS… They are documentary photographers, authors and journalists who have decided to aim their cameras at a series of unknown stories that had to be revealed, told, understood and denounced.

My Brother’s keeper gathers 22 protagonists and 20 exemplary stories of documentary photography. Each one is presented by an introductory text and an accurate selection of photographs conveys the sense and value of these extremely important reports.

From mid-nineteenth century America, in which Jacob Riis uses his camera in his strive to show everyone “how the other half lives”, to Lucinda Devlin’s more recent production which exposes the death chambers found in American prisons – the so-called omega suites –, we can keep track of the history of our days as well as of the history of photography, of those concerned authors who wanted to “show things that had to be corrected. Who wanted to show things that had to be appreciated”.

Alessandra Mauro graduated in modern literature at the University of Rome in 1982, and followed post-graduate studies in history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. For seven years she edited the scientific-cultural magazine Sfera, and in 1994 became editorial director of Contrasto Publishing House and chief curator in the exhibitions department. Between 2000 and 2004 she was curator of photography at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. Mauro teaches History of Photography at Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples, and is the artistic director of Forma, Centro Internazionale di Fotografia, in Milan

Susie Linfield was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives. She is an associate professor of journalism at New York University, and director of the university's Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program. Linfield has been an editor at "American Film," "The Village Voice" and "The Washington Post," and she writes about culture and politics for a wide array of publications.

6 ”x 9 ”

313 pages

177 color and B/W pictures

Hardback

Contrasto