Guido Guidi’s Col tempo, 1956–2024 is conceived as a retrospective in the fullest sense: not simply a survey of a long career, but a sequence arranged by the photographer himself. Published by MACK in conjunction with a major retrospective at MAXXI, Rome, the book opens with photographs Guidi made at fifteen in the countryside near his home in Cesena, Romagna, and follows nearly seven decades of work through changing forms, methods, and subjects.

Its range is substantial without losing its centre. Journeys through the United States, Russia, Turkey, and Portugal appear alongside studies of architecture by Carlo Scarpa, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. Yet the sequence repeatedly returns to the modest agricultural landscapes where Guidi was born and continues to live and work. These recurring places are not treated as picturesque scenery; they become the ground on which his precise, patient visual language is formed. The book also brings together celebrated series with early and recent unpublished works, paintings, and writings, allowing continuities and shifts within the practice to remain visible.

Guidi’s associative ordering gives the volume much of its character. Influences from Early Renaissance frescoes, minimalism, Pop art, and semiotics are identified not as a rigid programme but as strands within a layered body of work. Critical essays by Frits Gierstberg, Florian Ebner, Alessandro Coco, and MAXXI curators Simona Antonacci, Pippo Ciorra, and Antonello Frongia extend the retrospective’s interpretive frame without displacing the photographs themselves.

For collectors, the book’s importance lies in this unusual combination of breadth, authorial sequencing, and close attention to photographic scale. The large-format 2025 hardcover presents images printed at 1:1 in relation to Guidi’s original glass-plate negatives and handmade prints. At 432 pages, it functions as both an expansive account of a major photographic practice and a carefully constructed object through which Guidi’s principles can be read across time.