Matteo Di Giovanni: True Places Never Are

Unmoored from any sense of definite place, Di Giovanni’s landscapes reveal a universal tension between landscape and civilization

From 2013 to 2023, photographer Matteo Di Giovanni (born 1980) embarked on several rambling journeys off the beaten path through Italy, Scandinavia and Northern Europe, in which map and territory gave way to intuition and curiosity, documenting the outer world through attentive observation and image-making. Di Giovanni’s landscapes seem intimate and mythic, while the still lifes are vast and open—interior and exterior are interchangeable. True Places Never Are resequences this series of medium format photographs (originally released as three separate photobooks) and adds several previously unpublished images. The result is a fresh, cohesive body of work in which the location and chronology are secondary to the intangible meanings and associations suggested by the lens. Taken from a line in Moby-Dick, the title expands upon this search for metaphysical enlightenment: "It is not down on any map; true places never are."