180 bilingual pages on Apulia's emotional routes, across 14 towns and 15 food producers. Graphic design and photography by Gaetano Armenio, 2021.

In 2023 I prepared the second edition, and you only make a second edition when the first was good for something. The 2021 guide had found readers, the towns had used it, the producers had recognised themselves in it. So I updated it, took out what had not worked, added what was missing.

It is the official publication of PUGLIAUTENTICA.IT in an updated edition, a pocket colour guide of 140 pages, bilingual Italian and English, telling the Apulia of traditions, rites and food and wine to an Italian and international audience. Inside are thematic itineraries from Gargano to Salento, built around 14 towns and 15 food and farming producers.

I organised it by emotional itineraries, the Easter rites, the patron saint festivals, the food and wine routes, each with its own maps and practical directions. The real novelty is the "Meet the Maker" profiles, which introduce the local producers with a direct link to the shop on the www.pugliautentica.it portal, where typical products are bought from the people who make them. Not a company name on a list, the face of the person who works there. Editorial project, text, graphic design and layout, from the first line to the last page it is all mine.

A guide that reaches a second edition is no longer a gamble. It is a tool that has shown it works. Updating it means listening to those who used it the first time and correcting, not repeating. The Apulia you have never seen, by the second edition, I knew better myself too.

Shut indoors like everyone else, I had an idea that seemed out of step at the time. To make people want Apulia precisely when no one could move. Travel was frozen, the processions cancelled, the festivals closed. And I set about building a guide to bring people to Apulia, the moment it became possible again.

The result was the first official publication of PUGLIAUTENTICA.IT, a pocket colour guide of 180 pages, bilingual Italian and English, released in 2021. Inside are the emotional routes from Gargano to Salento, built around 14 towns and 15 food and farming producers.

I organised everything by theme, the Easter rites, the patron saint festivals, the paths among rock-hewn hermitages and pilgrim ways, the wine and food tours in cellars and oil mills. Each route is meant for those looking for Apulia off the mass circuits, not the crowded beach but the hermitage, not the tourist restaurant but the oil mill. The guide connects to the portal's e-commerce, where extra virgin olive oil, wine, preserves and traditional sweets are bought directly from the producers. Editorial project, text, graphic design and layout I carried through on my own, from the idea to the guide you find in your hands.

Building a travel guide while travel is banned sounds like a contradiction. It was not. The desire for a place does not stop when you do. That guide was there to keep it alight, ready for the day we could set off again.

Infinito Finito, a photographic reportage in the Holy Land by Gaetano Armenio, 140 pages, Editrice L'Immagine, 2005

In 2005 I joined the Franciscans of Molfetta, who are the custodians of some of the most important sites in Christianity. I wasn’t setting off as a pilgrim. I set off with my cameras, to see what remained of two thousand years of history in places where Christians, Armenians, Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims cross paths every day.

The result was Infinito Finito, a 140-page full-colour photo-essay in Italian. Nazareth, the Sea of Tiberias, the River Jordan, Mount Tabor, Mount Nebo, Caesarea, Acre, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Petra, Amman. Editrice L’Immagine printed 200 copies, which were sold in bookshops.

The Holy Land is one of the most photographed places on the planet. Anyone who goes there comes back with the same postcard-perfect images. I wanted the opposite: to portray it without the veneer of tourism, capturing the rituals, the real faces and the underlying tension.

That’s why the photographs in this book don’t stand alone. They are accompanied by verses from Palestinian poets, edited by Lucia Avellis. Where I cast my gaze from the outside, those words gave voice to those who live there.

In certain places, there is no such thing as a neutral photograph. Whilst you are observing, you are being observed. The camera does not protect you; it exposes you. Ultimately, that book is not about the Holy Land; it is about what it means to travel through it with a lens in hand.

The publication of the feature article marked the start of the project LA VIA DI GERUSALEMME