Scianna has never considered himself a landscape photographer, a portraitist, a fashion photographer or a pure photojournalist, even though he has been a member of Magnum since 1982, and even less an artist. The book was born as an attempt to bring together the different approaches of his career, in particular towards landscape. Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Naples and the Po Valley: many pictures made in Italy sit page after page beside snapshots from all over the world, the Ivory Coast, Saint Petersburg, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. It is a panorama of the world as he has seen it for half a century. "I have always thought that I take photographs because the world is there, not that the world is there so that I can take photographs. I did not look for these places either; I met them by living, and then chose some of the many pictures these encounters gave me to make a book in which to recognise myself." The book first accompanied the exhibition at Forma Meravigli in Milan in 2017.