“Photographs of familiar cities taken from helicopters that transform mighty buildings into what appear to be theme-park miniatures. Using a tilt-shift lens, the Milanese photographer blurs backgrounds to make individual monuments stand out in surreally sharp focus, creating what Barbieri describes as “the city as an avatar of itself”. Through his lens, the primary elements of cities as different as Rome and Las Vegas become toy-like and innocent, the stuff of primary school-era construction kits and childhood dreams. Cities, devoid of danger, in the palms of our hands.” — Jonathan Glancey

“His images are imposing in their dimensions and selective in their focus and blurring, unflinching in artificial nightlight or in corrosive daylight, where the human presence stands as frozen — Simonetta Franceschetti