Italy. Angels of Pompeii. Photographs by Stephen Brigidi, poems by Robert Bly.

Ballantine, 1st edition, 1st printing, January 1992. Fine in hardcover with fine protected dust jacket, like new. Brigidi’s color photographs of angels in Pompeii frescoes and the deteriorating walls around them, accompanied by Robert Bly's poetry.  Back of the book provides a chronology of Pompeii from the 8th Century B.C. to 1991. 

Angels of Pompeii (1992) is a photobook featuring fine art photographs by Stephen Brigidi paired with verse and text by poet and scholar Robert Bly, published by Ballantine Books.

Overview & Themes

• Visual & Literary Collaboration: The book pairs Brigidi’s evocative photography with Bly’s poetic reflections, exploring themes of antiquity, memory, and the enduring human spirit amidst historical ruins.

• Classical Imagery: Brigidi’s hand-colored, toned photographs capture the architectural fragments, statues, frescoes, and preserved forms of ancient Pompeii, rendering them with a dreamlike, atmospheric quality.

• Contemplative Tone: The work frames the ruins of Pompeii not merely as archaeological sites, but as timeless symbols of human presence, mortality, and transformation.

Stephen Brigidi (born 1951) is an American fine-art photographer, author, and educator whose work explores themes of light, architecture, memory, and the human landscape through classical processes and painterly aesthetics. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Brigidi earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1973 and a Master of Fine Arts under the mentorship of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind in 1976. Awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in 1977, he spent a year photographing in Rome, initiating a lifelong creative relationship with the architecture and topography of Italy. Renowned for his exquisite craftsmanship across diverse photographic mediums—ranging from large-format black-and-white field work and hand-colored platinum-palladium prints to digital pigment prints—Brigidi has published several critically acclaimed monographs, including Looking at Rome (1983), Remarkable Homes of New England (1992), Angels of Pompeii (1992), and Afraid of the Dark (2015). A dedicated professor who has taught at RISD, Pratt Institute, and the University of Hawaii, his work is held in the permanent collections of major cultural institutions—including the Getty Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art—solidifying his legacy as a master of poetic, contemplative photography.