The Wonder of Innocence

About this book

In this her fifth book of photographs world-renowned actress/photographer Gina Lollobrigida has created a brilliantly colorful surrealistic journey into a fantasy world of children and animals. The result of many years of travel to all corners of the world The Wonder of Innocence offers a dreamlike childs-eye view of life. Full of spontaneity whimsy and her great imagination Gina Lollobrigidas photographs are the result of a new and personal technique she developed one involving the painstaking joining of a multitude of images. The photographs are coupled with quotations from poets philosophers politicians and artists as diverse as Shakespeare Abraham Lincoln John Keats Charles de Gaulle Oscar Wilde Confucius Mark Twain and Albert Einstein as well as by proverbs and snippets of local folklore. A foreword by Mother Teresa of Calcutta an introduction by Lollobrigida and essays by Carlo Rubbia Ernesto Caffo and Fulco Pratesi further illuminate the themes explored in the photographs. This enchanting original volume reflects Lollobrigidas love of children everywhere and her respect for animals and offers the underlying hope that someday children and adults and all creatures can live together in harmony in a world free from destruction war and ecological disaster. Captured in her photographs is her belief that if we do not appreciate the nature that surrounds us we lose the ability to dream. Gina Lollobrigida is not only an actress but also an accomplished painter sculptor and photographer. The Wonder of Innocence represents a departure from her previous books which are more journalistic and dramatic. Lollobrigida is a photographer interested primarily in the human experience searching for truth and the beauty around us. She tries to capture real emotions and does so with gentle humor by as she says "creating with my camera the most beautiful images of my childhood dreams."