This special feature takes readers on a journey to the heart of Italy through a selection of photo books. Far from tourist clichés, these books offer a variety of perspectives on a country shaped by its history, landscapes, traditions, and contemporary contradictions.

Marc Verrecchia has been a bookseller on the banks of the Seine in Paris for 30 years. A specialist in fine art and photography books, he has been collecting books on Italy for all these years, a tiny fraction of which he offers at L'INAPERÇU.

Photographer Todd Hido has curated a series of photo albums that explore the concept of family through an intimate lens. These works show how photographers turn their lenses on their own loved ones, whether they are blood relatives or chosen families formed through friendship and community.

The images capture moments that reveal the complexity of domestic life and family ties in their various forms. The books present a range of approaches, from candid snapshots to formal portraits, and show how photographing one’s own family becomes both a personal archive and a way to understand relationships.

It is with great pleasure that L’INAPERÇU, for whom the photobook is at the very heart of its identity, presents a selection of some fifty of these compilations—these “Books on Photobooks”—which are often rare and highly sought after by collectors.

To mark this special feature on L’INAPERÇU, Innocences and Les Yeux Ouverts are co-publishing *The Book of Books on Photobooks*, a compilation of books about photography books published around the world, featuring over a hundred titles.

For the first time, the bookstore L'INAPERÇU is entrusting its curation to a collector.

“A Photograph, a Book from Jérôme Prochiantz’s Collection” presents a selection of 50 photography books featuring reproductions of prints from his collection.

Jérôme Prochiantz is no ordinary collector. A photography enthusiast, he has amassed over 500 prints over the years, which he has lovingly hung on the walls of his apartment.

An apartment where photography icons such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Arthur Tress, and Nan Goldin rub shoulders with lesser-known artists who have had a profound influence on him.

For *L'INAPERÇU*, Martin Parr, drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of photography books, has selected 50 titles to highlight the creativity of British documentary photographers and the quality of their books. By bringing together familiar names like Chris Killip and emerging artists like Kavi Pujari, this selection will give the public a clearer picture of the multifaceted talent found in the United Kingdom.

Today we are inundated with a constant stream of images. Everyone is a photographer, and any one of us can, on occasion, take a really great photo. In the small world of photobooks, artists often tend to take themselves a little too seriously, and humor is rare.

“About America, from America, concerning America… The South and its images, the South of its North—the one about which Alfredo Jaar declared in 1987 on a map of the U.S., ‘This is not America’”

“There is a tradition of films and novels that focus on a single character. In recent years, there has also been a proliferation of photo books in which every image is devoted to a single person: *The One Person Photobook*”

“ I invite you to explore a series of photobooks that examine the many facets of today’s world. This invitation can be extended with a photographic stroll through the nearby galleries—all located in the Marais—where the authors of these books are represented.”