This 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. 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 neighborhood. 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. 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.