Giovanna Silva — Compulsion…Composition

Less a monograph than a portrait, Compulsion…Composition approaches Milan-born photographer, writer and publisher Giovanna Silva through her habits of looking: restless, accumulative, and unable to stop. Over five years and across ten cities, Silva photographed the collections laid out on market stalls, the odd, careful arrangements of objects that traders assemble and that she returns to again and again. The book gathers hundreds of these images into a dense, absorbing sequence where meaning emerges through sheer abundance.

It's a book that asks for slow attention, the kind that rewards lingering over a single spread rather than flicking through. Designed by London studio OK-RM, it is as much a reflection on the making of a book as on the photographs inside it, with the edit and layout echoing the compulsive gathering of its subject.

Silva, founder of Humboldt Books, is known for her photographic studies of cities and architecture, from Milan and Naples to Tehran and Islamabad. This volume turns the lens toward the artist herself.