Photographs 1934–1973

Carlo Mollino: Photographs 1934-1973 is the fullest survey yet published of Mollino's photographic work. It spans four decades, from his earliest experiments to the images found in his studio after his death.

Mollino trained as an architect and made his name in Turin designing furniture, interiors, and buildings. Photography ran through nearly all of it. He photographed his own buildings and interiors as extensions of their design. He documented alpine skiing and mountain landscapes, an early passion of his. In his final years he made thousands of Polaroids of local sex workers in his apartment, never exhibited in his lifetime. Francesco Zanot edited this book, published by Silvana Editoriale in 2018. It draws on Mollino's full archive to trace these different bodies of work as a single, continuous photographic practice rather than a footnote to his design career.

Mollino (1905-1973) worked in Turin as an architect, industrial designer, and university professor. He also raced cars, flew planes, and skied. The library holds two narrower volumes drawn from this same archive. Polaroids collects the erotic Polaroid series from his final years. Giappone 1970 collects photographs from his 1970 trip to Japan for Expo '70. This survey is the wider frame those two sit inside.