Francesca Maria Fiorella
Francesca Maria Fiorella
Wunderhaus
12,5 x 17,5 cm
Self Published
25 Copies
Number of pages: 91
Binding: sheets without binding pearl paper and matt coated
paper french flap dust jacket, tracing paper - gold band
LO.FT/Book Design
From the Artist
"The title of the project, incorporates the famous Wunderkammer, chamber of wonders: expression belonging to the German language, used of denote particular environments in which, from the 16th century to 18th century, the collectors used to store collections of extraordinary objects for their features. So, my parents beach house, in its own way, has always been the house of wonders.It's as a small family museum, a place full of unnecessary objectively, useful, quirky, bulky, trivial, now very vintage, that return to live cyclically, in the summer.Meeting holiday from the end of the 50th, where four generation, over the years, have left their tracks. A family tree that could be rebuilt at only associating with each member of the family a single object.
Or surely even more than one. I like to joke comparing it to an house of serial accumulators, that this seriously is the so-called compulsive hoarding disorder. But, at the end, it is this obsession that revives memory flows, creates and documents the identity of a place and time of its inhabitants."
This book is a captivating and amusing book. Made with post-cards, this is not your ordinary photography book. When we received the package with the book, and opened it up I was immediately struck by the book cover. It looked precious but at the same time rough. Covered in geometric lines, the book title is bold and in gold. The second surprise was the book itself. Opening it up to reveal a large pile of post-cards. Each card with a vibrant background and one single object in it.
Categorized by type of objects, you flip through it assuming you know what the next post-card will show you, and everyone in a while you get moved into another category, style, moment.
Although, not all the images or objects are equally interesting as such, the book as a whole represents a cultural history and narrative that is playful and nostalgic. It is not about each card by its own but how they create, together, this story of place and belonging.
My favorite series has to be oven mittens. There is something about this domestic object that brings back memories of my own home, but also represents an interesting cultural reference of what is home in general.
From Francesca’s words and story, you know these objects are connected to her personal family, yet in some odd way there is almost nothing ‘personal’ about it. I mean by that, that I feel as if the personal story was a motivation, was the reason behind, was the materials used to create it, but its story of a culture, a time, a family dynamics is stronger than the story of one specific family.
I enjoyed looking at this book, it made me nostalgic, made me laugh, made me happy and made me sad sometimes. It made me think about my history, about where I came from, what I felt was similar to my own family, and what was distance.
This is the power of the book.
