D'ADDARIO, Anna Maria Antoinette - Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light

Background information

The photo book 'Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light' by Anna Maria Antionette D'ADDARIO fits seamlessly into the series of very personal photo books that Ceiba Editions has been publishing for several years. Often, as in this photo volume, it is about personal fates, losses and experiences from the family environment. The publishing house has set itself the task of publishing artist's books with this content in somewhat larger editions in order to make them accessible to a wider circle. 'Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light' isv published in an edition of 350 copies.
In it, the Australian-Italian photographer works through the trauma she suffered when she lost her sister to a violent death, and at the same time formulates an elegy dedicated to her sister with this book of photographs. Anna Maria Antonetta D'ADDARIO works with photos from their shared childhood as well as with metaphors, and in this way also clarifies the use and possibility of photography to artistically confront personal fates.

Book Review, content

"The photo book 'Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light' by Anna Maria Antionette D'ADDARIO contains beautifully interwoven visual metaphors. The photographer uses them to address the dealings such as silence and despair that accompany the tragic death of a beloved sibling, especially when amplified by the horror of murder and violence. In a unique elegy, she works with the intensity of extreme personal loss and family trauma. This approach requires a great deal of courage and psychological stamina from the artist as she opens herself up not only to her own raw, painful feelings, but also to potentially morbid feelings from the viewer such as curiosity, fear, or sympathy, as well as countless unexpected rebuttals.
Anna Maria Antonette D'ADDARIO addresses the problems associated with remembering, and how memory and photography are inextricably linked to place, time, nostalgia, and forgetting.  In this way, she creates a body of work that carefully explores the value and use of photography as a tool for symbolic, emotional, and poetic communication." (© Dr. Ella Dreyfus, visual artist and academic at the National Art School, Sydney, Australia)

Additional information

"The photo book dummy 'Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light' by Anna Maria Antionette D'ADDARIO was the winning project of the 2019 PhotoBoox Award.

About Italian-Australian photographer Anna Maria Antonette D'ADDARIO

Photo books by Anna Maria Antonette D'ADDARIO