Mediterranean

Mediterranean. Photographs by Mimmo Jodice. Essays by Predrag Matvejevic and George Hersey. A photographic evocation of the mystery and allure of the classical mediterranean world. Jodice's luminous depiction of figures, architecture, and vistas transccontemporary political boundaries in a fusion of the topographical, the temporal, and the infinite. 100 blackandwhite quadratone photographs, 9 1/2 X 12, pages. Mimmo Jodice's work is defined first of all by what it rejects and by its asceticism. It repels confession and avowalindeed, any eloquence; it cultivates instead reticence and discretion, it is impelled by a lyricism that is both reserved and impassioned. The Chronicle of Higher Education Mr. Jodice depicts a mythical place, a homogenous Mediterranean of the imagination. Wars, winds, pillage and time have bruised the stones, yet they remain undefiled by Club Med. It is as if endlessly lapping water had effaced the national borders, dissolved the plastic Evian bottles, washed the sun worshippers out to sea. What's left behind is a romantic intertwining of wholeness and the oceanic sensation of merger between a self and its surroundings. Herbert Muschamp, The New York Times