Familiar Stranger + INSIDE + In the Sun on the Moon,... Photobooks Combo

Mobile devices are often the main vehicle through which we document our everyday life. Our aim with these photobooks is to put on paper what was originally conceived for a digital environment. A collective reasearch engaging amateur and professional photographers to reflect on the overload of images we experience everyday and what we might want to communicate through them.

FAMILIAR STRANGER is the first book on Mobile Photography published by PhMuseum. The concept is focused on Stanley Milgram's definition of Familiar Stranger (Milgram 1972) as those individuals who do not know each other but share some common attributes like interests, occupation, location etc. For instance, people taking the same train daily find familiar faces but do not know each other. Moving this concept to a virtual environment, it is equally interesting and challenging to explore the existence of familiar strangers in the current online world. Social networks represent indeed a complex set of human relations where interactions are expressed through posts, tags, shares, and likes. With this book we aim to reflect on them and the common attributes, behavioural patterns, and interests suggested by the 11,000 photos sent to the PHmuseum 2019 Mobile Photography Prize.

In light of the COVID-19 crisis, PHmuseum dedicated the 2020 Mobile Photography Prize to explore and understand that surreal moment. INSIDE is the result of that collective visual reflection on the pandemic. Which are our own personal and collective feelings? How it is redefining the relationship with our home, family and community? The publication reflects on this historical transition, becoming a medium to immortalize and remember these unprecedented months. Its images speak about how the world stopped and we all had to confront with our fears and hopes for the future. Images that can become an inspiration for us after the crisis and an important document for the generation to come.

IN THE SUN ON THE MOON,... is the third PhMuseum's volume that completes the Mobile Photography collection. The volume is edited by American photographer Jason Fulford and challenges the traditional understanding of a portrait while examining its concern with the human presence in its wider sense. The concept has been inspired by the experience of the workshop What to do with 2500 images? which Fulford led during PhMuseum Days 2021. The resulting sequence, in Fulford's own words, wishes to be "a fictional narrative in three movements. The characters confront, in turn, the reader, themselves, and the mystery of the cosmos". This collective book features more than 50 photographers and 65 images coming from the PhMuseum 2021 Mobile Photography Prize.

Book details:
IN THE SUN ON THE MOON,... (2022):
Format: Hardback 17x24 cm | 112 pages
Project Supervision: Giuseppe Oliverio & Rocco Venezia
Concept, Editing & Design: Jason Fulford
Edition: 1st, printed in 750 copies

INSIDE (2021):
Format: Hardback 17x24 cm | 160 Pages
Concept: Giuseppe Oliverio and Rocco Venezia
Edition: 1st, printed in 500 copies
Design: Gluqbar

FAMILIAR STRANGER (2020):
Format: Softcover 15x24 cm | 160 Pages
Concept: Giuseppe Oliverio and Rocco Venezia
Edition: 1st, printed in 750 copies
Design: Paolo Berra, Patrizio Anastasi