'Check out' is more than a photobook, it is a project involving images, music and verse. The whole is conceived and produced by Hornschaft (Giordano Simoncini and Alesssandro Incorvaia). The two of them met in Rome twelve years ago and instantly bonded over music and photography. Now, even if they are based in different countries, they came together in order to produce 'Check Out'.
The book is divided in chapters, which seem to me they are describing phases; phases of a perpetual movement that lead to some kind of personal evolvement in a cyclical mode. These chapters present three main themes: excess, exposure and death.
Throughout our skype conversation I try to define what the book is, how should I interpret it, in what level should I read it? And then it hits me... 'Check Out' is not a simple photobook and one should not limit themselves in perceiving it as one.
Questions with no answers will eventually get interpreted by the reader/listener individually. The book is the description of a very intimate/ personal phase which needs to be experienced by everyone independently. I’ve been thinking that this might be the reason the two authors refused to define the chapters of the book, and now I totally understand why!
At the beginning my rational side would not let me see it, but as I procrastinated for some time, when I finally revisited the recording of the conversation I understood! 'Check Out' is an experience defined by each place, each feeling, each personality, differently and independently.
Distance, trips, change, turning pages in our lives, things we leave behind and essences we will always carry, all of them are memories which constitute our respective personalities, and as the two authors suggest, with no movement there is no progress.
So yes, this is a photobook but it should not be perceived as one. Or at least the reader should not expect a beginning with an end; it is an interpretation of a passage and the fact that it is visualised and accompanied by music is the inner need of the authors to express themselves through what they do the best, photography and music. Check out is just 'Check Out'!
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