New book "Francesca Woodman, The Roman Years ~ Between Flesh & Film"

Written by Isabella Pedicini Saturday, 11 February 2012 22:53

ROME.- This superb volume takes a new look at the life and work of Francesca Woodman through a fresh analysis of the photographs and writings from her Roman sojourn. A precocious artist and a figure caught between two cultures –American and Italian– Francesca Woodman reached the acme of her artistic parable in Rome, where she fully defined her aesthetic and stylistic sensibilities. Drawing from extensive research, the author analyzes the relationship of Woodman’s work to Surrealism , as well as the artist’s use of the body as its own artistic language, and her interest in metamorphosis and the post-mortem, questioning the finality of death and thus also of critical readings that define Woodman’s work by the tragic nature of her own death. Readers will come to know her photographs intimately, drawn into the intensely personal conversations which echo through her images.

By retracing Woodman’s everyday walks through the city and drawing us into personal stories as remembered by close friends, the author reconstructs Woodman’s most formative experiences in Rome, from the Maldoror bookshop in Via del Parione to the ateliers of the Nuova Scuola Romana at the old Cerere Pasta Factory in the San Lorenzo neighbourhood.

This book reveals a new and intimate side of a great photographer, taking us on a journey through the labyrinth of words and images that illuminate Francesca Woodman’s universe.

Francesca Woodman (April 3, 1958 - January 19, 1981) was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring herself and female models. Many of her photographs show young women who are nude, who are blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), who are merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured. Her work continues to be the subject of much attention, years after she committed suicide at the age of 22.

The book will be available next February 2012.

Isabella Pedicini was born in Benevento in 1983. A writer and freelance journalist, she took a degree in Art History at the University La Sapienza of Rome. She worked at the library-gallery “il museo del louvre ” of Giuseppe Casetti and currently works at the Foundation Pastificio Cerere in Rome.

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