NEW YORK, NY.- Chromotherapia: Feel-Good Color Photography (Damiani Books, 2025) offers relief through the power of color. Not always taken seriously, color photography has enabled artists to get out their palettes and “paint,” freeing themselves to explore the imaginary and to flirt with the worlds of Surrealism and Pop. Edited by famed Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan and curator Sam Stourdzé, the book offers a rereading of the history of color photography through the 20th century into the 21st—a journey into vibrant, saturated worlds of sunny yellow, azure blue, bright red, bubbly orange and more, straight from the lenses of the biggest names in color photography.
Chromotherapia features the photographic work of Miles Aldridge, Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, Juno Calypso, Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari (Toiletpaper), Walter Chandoha, Harold Edgerton, Hassan Hajjaj, Hiro, Ouka Leele, Arnold Odermatt, Ruth Ginka Ossai, Martin Parr, Pierre et Gilles, Alex Prager, Adrienne Raquel, Sandy Skoglund, William Wegman, and Madame Yevonde. The publication accompanies an exhibition curated by Maurizio Cattelan and Sam Stourdzé at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, on view from February 28 to June 9, 2025.
Among the highlights are work by Walter Chandoha, nicknamed "The Cat Photographer," who captures a human-like quality in cats photographed against saturated backgrounds, and William Wegman tenderly immortalizing his dogs, transforming his four-legged companions into artistic icons. Juno Calypso subverts the visual conventions of film and advertising to question societal expectations of femininity, and Ouka Leele uses vibrant tones to evoke the liberation of bodies in the context of post-Franco cultural revolution. Police photographer Arnold Odermatt documents road accidents in meticulous compositions with liquified color, and Martin Parr points his lens at sugary donuts or baskets of French fries, suggesting the indigestibility of the modern world.
Whether magnifying the details of an everyday scene or redefining beauty standards in magazines, color photography offers an intensely chromatic vision of the world. This diversity of gazes and practices bears witness to a common thread: the desire to make us see things differently, by infusing images with the life and emotion that only color can convey.
Maurizio Cattelan is one of the foremost Italian artists on the contemporary art scene. For more than thirty years, his works have been highlighting the paradoxes of society and putting forward an incisive reflection on political and cultural scenarios. Using iconic images and caustic visual language, his creations arouse lively public debate, encouraging the spirit of collective participation.
Sam Stourdzé specializes in contemporary images and the relationship between art, photography, and film. He has curated numerous exhibitions and is the author of several seminal books. Since 2020 he has been the Director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, of which he is a former fellow. Previously, he directed the Rencontres d’Arles and the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, and he was editor-in-chief of the photography magazine ELSE.
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