Site Specific is a summary of Olivo Barbieri’s ten-year project to record the world’s cities in aerial photographs. On the one hand, the book offers remarkable documentation, by a thrilling image-maker, of twenty-five cities throughout the world. On the other, it is a narrative of Barbieri’s evolving approach to photography and his thoughts about the nature of the medium. Presented chronologically, the photographs begin with the distinct “tilt-shift” photographs of Italian cities with which Barbieri first established his reputation—and that launched a popular stylistic movement for selective-focus photographs. During the series, he later introduced other devices and approaches to “distort” perceived reality—such as playing with color, registration, and the deletion or discoloring of particular details—to dramatic effect. The result is a remarkable photo essay about twenty-first-century urban space and about photography itself. The book is introduced by Christopher Phillips and features Barbieri’s city-by-city commentary. Aperture will present and tour an exhibition of the work beginning in the fall of 2013.