In Le regard oblique, Luciano Romano turns the stairway into both subject and instrument: an architectural structure through which space, gravity, perception and aspiration can be reconsidered. Published by 5 Continents Editions in 2017, the book gathers thirty-six colour photographs that treat stairs not simply as passages between floors, but as thresholds between states of awareness. Their strict construction carries an almost metaphysical charge, suggesting humanity’s effort to shape nature, reach what lies beyond the immediate, and make ascent a material act.
Romano’s approach depends on a productive instability. Banisters coil towards intense light or descend into apparently bottomless darkness; planes and repetitions organise the frame, then unsettle the eye. Geometry remains legible, yet the images can tip into dreamlike visions, in which built space begins to resemble a psychological or emotional condition. Light and shadow do more than describe architecture: they register movement between weight and release, matter and something less tangible. The result is a sequence that asks the viewer to look obliquely—to allow familiar structures to become strange without losing their physical presence.
The book’s intellectual and literary dimension is integral to that experience. Michel Serres contributes the accompanying text, extending the photographs’ ascents and descents into a meditation where geometry, art, music and writing meet. This is not an illustrated architectural survey, but a carefully framed collaboration between photographic vision and philosophical reflection. The multilingual presentation in French, Italian and English further places the work within a broad cultural conversation.
For collectors, Le regard oblique deserves attention for the precision with which it sustains a single motif across thirty-six images while continually varying its emotional and visual effects. Its substantial 27.5 × 35.5 cm hardcover format, issued with a jacket and extending to 104 pages, gives the sequence room to unfold as a considered object. Romano’s distinctive treatment of space—represented in public and private collections including MAXXI in Rome and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation—makes this a focused statement on how photography can turn architecture into an instrument of thought.
