The latest from Massimo Vitali, master portraitist of the beach and the disco

This large-format volume, collecting images from 2009 to 2018, is the latest in Steidl’s series publishing the life’s work of Massimo Vitali. Following the first two volumes, published together as Landscape with Figures / Natural Habitats, 1994–2009 in 2011 (and now out of print), Entering a New World presents Vitali’s large-scale color images of humans interacting en masse―both consciously and unconsciously―with their environments.
Whether relaxing beachside, exploring the ruins of the Roman Forum or navigating a crowded shopping promenade, the scenes in these photographs are topographical celebrations and subtle critiques of our changing habits of leisure. The book furthermore traces an important shift in Vitali’s practice: his move from large-format film to medium-format digital.
Born in Como in 1944, Massimo Vitali studied photography at the London College of Printing. Beginning in the 1960s, Vitali worked as a photojournalist, collaborating with magazines and agencies throughout Europe before turning to cinematography for television and cinema in the early 1980s. He eventually returned to still photography as an artist, taking up large-format photography in 1993 and beginning his famous Beach Series in 1995. Steidl has published Vitali’s Landscape with Figures (2004) and Landscape with Figures / Natural Habitats, 1994–2009 (2011).