The ancient, the gorgeous, and the touchingly quotidian all cohere in this breezily gorgeous tour of photographer Giglio’s tour of Italy, a nation he toasts in a preface not just as “the land of my ancestors” but as that rare place where “everyone could pronounce my name.” That blended sense of history and the everyday powers Walk With Me, as Giglio and his camera visit Italian cities, taking in the splendors—the cliffs of the Amalfi coast astonishing here, even if you’ve seen them in person—and the street life. This he captures with an eye for telling detail, like the hands of the nun in Naples who rushes toward him, urging him to pray for the poor, or the grizzled stub of cigar poking from a tangle of beard on the face of man experiencing homelessness.

That’s not to suggest that Walk With Me emphasizes the darkest corners of Italian life. Giglio’s eyes are clear, but he’s often enchanted, finding beauty in umbrellas in rainy streets, in couples embracing and kissing, and in the rhythms and rituals of life offline, like a man reading the newspaper in the morning in an outdoor café or the several shots of adults gathered together outdoors, relishing each other’s company. Giglio’s captions tend to be playful, like many of his photos, but through them, with a minimum of fuss, he makes a case for the nourishing qualities of such connections.

Amid the courtyards, cathedrals, and hardworking pasta-makers, Giglio’s tour offers welcome surprises, captured on the fly but with striking, resonant compositions: a janitor, eyes glazed, sweeping a train station on a tractor-sized machine; a balloon peddler texting on his phone while his crop of unicorns and other inflated characters bob above. The preserved skeletons of ancient victims of Vesuvius offer a jolt among so many touching scenes of life, but the contrast proves illuminating: like Giglio’s other subjects, they were people, in their time, holding to each other.

Takeaway: Gorgeous tour of contemporary Italy, in photos emphasizing everyday splendor.

Comparable Titles: Harvey Stein’s Movimento, Agostino Priarolo’s People’s Republic of Venice!

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A