Published by Void, We Have Learned to Distrust Images brings together Francesco Gioia’s street photography and his experiments with collage. The book considers the gap between what a photograph seems to show and how it was made, drawing attention to the moment when recognition gives way to doubt. Gioia combines his own photographs with material found in newspapers and magazines. He cuts, rearranges and layers these fragments by hand, removing them from their original contexts before photographing the finished collages. What began as separate pictures becomes a new photographic scene, its origins harder to trace. This physical process gives the work its particular character. Each composition develops through the handling of paper, deliberate choices and chance encounters between fragments. In a visual culture where documentation and fabrication can be difficult to distinguish, Gioia explores that uncertainty through analogue methods.

The resulting photographs seem familiar at first, yet resist easy explanation. Looking closer does not necessarily resolve them. Instead, the book asks us to consider what makes a picture convincing, and how readily we trust what we think we recognise.