Mario Testino. Ciao. Omaggio all’Italia gathers Mario Testino’s photographs of a country that has occupied a central place in both his life and his work. Published by TASCHEN in 2020, the 254-page volume draws on images made across four decades, including personal photographs not previously published. Venice, Rome, Naples, Florence, Turin, Montepulciano, and the Italian coast appear not as entries in a geographic survey, but as parts of a sustained, subjective account.

Testino’s connection to Italy began with his Italian heritage and deepened through direct experience. Rome, in particular, shaped his early fascination with fashion and with the Italian capacity to absorb new styles without surrendering a distinct identity. That tension between change and continuity runs through the book. Friends and public figures, fashion shoots, streets, landscapes, food, art, and social life are brought into the same field of attention, allowing commissioned image-making and private observation to illuminate one another.

The sequence is organized into three sections: IN GIRO, devoted to movement through the country; ALLA MODA, centered on fashion; and AL MARE, turning toward the sea. This structure avoids reducing Italy to a single mood. Urban energy and cultivated display sit beside leisure, friendship, and informal encounters, while portraiture and fashion photography remain connected to place and custom.

For a serious photobook collection, Ciao is significant as a concentrated authorial selection rather than a general career overview. Testino’s own choice of favored Italian images, combined with the three-part thematic arrangement, clarifies how his fashion and portrait practice intersects with travel, personal memory, and observations of national culture. The book rewards attention not through claims of comprehensiveness, but through the continuity of a relationship sustained over many years.