About this Event
Rizzoli Bookstore is delighted to host Andrea Modica, to celebrate her newest monograph, Italian Story, a meditation on her 40 year relationship with Italy, as well as Catholic Girl, her first monograph of large format platinum palladium print portraits. She will be in conversation with Vince Aletti, followed by a signing.
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
Can't attend? Order your signed copies online (please specify you would like it signed in the comments at checkout).
by Andrea Modica
by Andrea Modica
A forty-year photographic journey through Italy, Italian Story blends history and fiction into a deeply personal meditation on time, place, and the act of seeing.
Italian Story is the culmination of more than forty years of photographic work by Andrea Modica in Italy, a country with which the artist has formed a deep, evolving relationship. Made entirely with an 8×10 view camera, the photographs span decades and regions, revealing a slow, attentive way of seeing rooted in time, presence, and return. The title draws from the layered meaning of the Italian word storia—at once history, story, situation, and fiction—reflecting the book’s open, fluid narrative. Rather than offering a linear account, Italian Story unfolds as a personal and poetic record of encounters, places, and moments shaped by memory and imagination. Balancing intimacy and distance, documentary precision and lyrical ambiguity, Modica’s images form a quiet meditation on duration, place, and the act of looking. Published by L’Artiere, the book stands as an ongoing visual narrative—both lived and constructed—between photographer and country.
In Catholic Girl Andrea Modica presents her first work done in large format platinum palladium prints. This series of portraits was shot in the early 1980's in Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Connecticut.
In Catholic Girl Andrea Modica presents her first monograph, produced in large format platinum palladium prints. This series of portraits was shot in the early 1980s in Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Connecticut.
Andrea Modica was born in New York City and lives in Philadelphia, where she works as a photographer and teaches at Drexel University. A graduate of the Yale School of Art, she is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar and the recipient of a Knight Award.
Her books include Treadwell (Chronicle Books), Minor League (Smithsonian Press), Barbara (Nazraeli), Human Being (Nazraeli), Fountain (Stinehour Editions), l’Amico del’Cuore (Nazraeli), As We Wait (L’Artiere Editions), Lentini (Kris Graves Projects), January 1 (L’Artiere Editions), Reveal (Yoffy Press), 2020 (TIS Books), Theatrum Equorum (TIS Books), Catholic Girl (L’Artiere Editions) and Italian Story (L’Artiere Editions).
Andrea Modica’s photographs have been featured in many magazines, including the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek and American Photo. Her solo exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts. Her photographs are part of the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the ICP, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, and the Bibliotheque Nationale.
All the photographs on this website and in Andrea Modica’s books are made with an 8X10” camera with Kodak Tri-x film. The final prints are platinum-palladium.
Vince Aletti (Physique, The Drawer) is a critic, writer, and curator based in New York. Following nearly twenty years as the Art Editor and photography critic for The Village Voice, he joined The New Yorker in 2005 as the photography critic for ‘Goings On About Town’ and continues to contribute to the magazine. He has published Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines (2019), followed by a reissue of his Disco Files 1973-1978: New York’s Underground, Week by Week (2018). His most recent book, The Drawer (2022), was named the Aperture/Paris Photo PhotoBook of the Year in 2023.
Event venue & nearby stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
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