Between Sky & Earth: Liberto Macarro

by John Berger

Animals are everywhere in rock art and they are represented without limits, with no borders. They merge with the earth and the sky. In the photography of Liberto Macarro we find the same worldview, the same sensations. One nature: landscape, animals, men closely linked, intertwined. Macarro, a French photographer who lives in the mountainous region of Savoy, has photographed cows and other large mammals (elephants, camels) in the Alps, Spain, India, Tibet. His photographs are generally close up of the animals, often concentrating on their hides or on parts of the animal and the surrounding landscape. As the celebrated French writer Daniel Pennac says, 'Until now, since I quit the city for the mountains, I believed I was seeing cows in the landscape. Now, the photos of Liberto Macarro present me with another view: the cows are the landscape by themselves, in their solemn majesty. Lines of the backs merge with the profiles of the mountains, hides that resemble patches of grass, muscles and articulat

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.

Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,

Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.