The first extensive monograph dedicated to the work of Paolo Ventura (Milan, 1968). Ventura has established himself in the field of artistic photography, offering a singular and absolutely original interpretation of staged photography, an art form in which photography is the final product of a creative process which, in his case, involves the preparation of scenarios and mannequins: the latter, together with real characters among which the artist himself often appears, are the protagonists of his stories. In these three-dimensional settings Ventura recreates, and then fixes through photography, a mental space that refers to the atmosphere of “magical realism” and to the fairytale flavour of childhood, generating a deliberately surreal contrast with the depth of some topics involved (such as war, abandonment, memory, identity). The volume offers an overall look at the artist’s 15 years of activity, showcasing 21 series from 2005 to the present time, highlighting the evolution of his language which, in addition to photography, is also expressed through drawings. The monograph includes critical texts by Walter Guadagnini and Francine Prose, an interview with Ventura by Monica Poggi and biographical notes. Text in English and Italian.

This book highlights new and original contributions on Graph Theory and Combinatorial Optimization both from the theoretical point of view and from applications in all fields. The book chapters describe models and methods based on graphs, structural properties, discrete optimization, network optimization, mixed-integer programming, heuristics, meta-heuristics, math-heuristics, and exact methods as well as applications. The book collects selected contributions from the CTW2020 international conference (18th Cologne-Twente Workshop on Graphs and Combinatorial Optimization), held online on September 14-16, 2020. The conference was organized by IASI-CNR with the contribution of University of Roma Tre, University Roma Tor Vergata, and CNRS-LIX and with the support of AIRO. It is addressed to researchers, PhD students, and practitioners in the fields of Graph Theory, Discrete Mathematics, Combinatorial Optimization, and Operations Research.