Fosco Maraini (1912 – 2004) was an Italian anthropologist, orientalist, mountaineer, photographer, writer and poet.He held the chair of Japanese Language and Literature at the University of Florence.

The result of two years of research, this publication presents 230 images ranging from photographs taken in the company of the famous orientalist Giuseppe Tucci in India, Sikkim and Tibet to the vast photographic reconnaissance in southern Italy; from shots dedicated to Greece and its history to the mosaics of Monreale; from Japan and the culture of the Ainu, the most ancient ethnic group of the Rising Sun, to the charm of the fisherwomen of the island of Hèkura in the Sea of ​​Japan; from expeditions to the Karakorum and other mountains, to intense reportages around the world.
In addition to unpublished memoirs and extensive critical insights, the volume offers an anthology of Maraini's writings on photography and an interpretative apparatus.

Maraini’s images are "captured from the present", as Maraini himself loved to say with one of his surprising neologisms: empresente. Images, trying to catch the unrepeatable moment in which our eyes perceive the movements.

Published on the occasion of the 2024/25 exhibition at MUSEC, Lugano.