Libya 2006

That is a picture of the ancient Greek and Roman ruins of Libya, from a distance. It is hard to imagine that once upon a time here in this dry desert was a thriving enterprise and an empire teeming with activity, drama, and culture just a few thousand years ago. Perhaps now it is all left completely to our imagination especially after the recent civil war and bombings. Without these landmarks, these fossils, who will remember? Unless one bothers to pick up a book, or look through some photographs, it is as if nothing happened. All turned into dust.

These film photographs were taken in 2006 by my husband Francesco. Back then he had the lucky opportunity to visit (it was never so easy for foreigners to visit Libya under Geddafi). At the time he was so inspired by his experience that he immediately wrote a book, very personal and he was about to publish it but unfortunately one of the real-life characters involved in the book did not approve of it and it had to go hidden until the recent war broke out and a sudden desire to release this work made him rewrite the whole book and publish it this year. I used some of his pictures from the actual trip to create the cover for Libya 2006: Viaggio a tre voci (A Trip in 3 Voices). Here is the design I came up with, my imagination of what Libya feels like.

The publisher has a fixed format for their books so I didn't have to design the title and text but here is how it looks printed.

It is in Italian and Francesco has some copies if anyone is interested in purchasing. Do you think its a good idea to try and make it available for purchase online?