Urban Farmers: The Now (and How) of Growing Food in the City, photographed by Valery Rizzo and published by Gestalten in 2021, examines urban agriculture as both a practical activity and a response to the way contemporary life is organized. Its subject is the cultivation, processing, and distribution of food within cities—a field that ranges from rooftop beekeeping to underground mushroom farms and from domestic balconies to community gardens and small enterprises.

The book’s premise is direct: as urban structures increasingly shape daily life, the places where food is grown become part of the city’s cultural and ecological vocabulary. Rather than treating agriculture as something separate from urban experience, Urban Farmers presents it as a set of adaptable practices. The emphasis falls on know-how, tools, and examples that can be understood across different scales, linking individual cultivation with broader questions of greener living, food awareness, and the quality of city life.

Rizzo’s photographic contribution gives this subject a distinctly book-length form. The diversity of sites and methods creates a broad account of how cultivation can occupy unexpected urban spaces, while the combination of visual documentation and practical orientation keeps the work connected to lived use rather than abstraction. The result sits between photographic survey, design publication, and guide to sustainable urban practice.

For collectors, the book merits attention as a clearly defined record of a subject that connects photography with architecture, sustainability, gardening, and social change. Its 256 pages offer room for that breadth, and its hardcover format suits a sustained engagement with the material. More than a catalogue of picturesque gardens, Urban Farmers frames food production as an active part of urban culture and asks how cities might grow differently.