Paradise Road   |   43 Photographs   |   Charta, Milan, 2010

Publisher’s Description: New Zealand-born, New York-based photographer Brian Sweeney moves between long-distance reverie and the documentation of pattern and motif in landscape. Of this work, essayist Stuart McKenzie writes that “you can’t look at Sweeney’s photographs in “Paradise Road” and find paradise in and of itself. Instead, they carefully send you on your way, deflecting any pretense of essentiality.”

Back cover text: “While we may have lost a religious outlook, there are certain modalities of nature that continue to move us on a symbolic and/or unconscious level. No doubt this is part of the power of Brian Sweeney’s photographs in “Paradise Road”. These photos envision the world around us in its grandeur and banality as a sacred milieu to the very extent that it is not. The word “paradise” tells us to look up, but then again the word “road” advises that we keep our feet on the ground. Sweeney’s keenly discriminated images of sky, clouds, horizons, mountains, water, and trees strike us with an atavistic sense of the sacred power of nature.”

Brian Sweeney was born in New Zealand in 1958. He has a degree in Politics and works in corporate business as an advisor. He has been a concert, film and book producer. He lives in New York. The photographs in “Paradise Road” were taken in the decade 2000-2009.

Stuart McKenzie is a playwright and filmmaker. He has degrees in Creative Writing and Contemporary Religion and writes about the visual arts in New Zealand and internationally. His most recent play is “Biography of My Skin.”

Giuseppe Liverani founded Edizioni Charta srl in 1992 in Milano Italy as a publishing house with a perspective on art incorporating painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, and performance. Charta have published over 900 titles, which are distributed via museums, art galleries and leading bookstores throughout the world.