In her rooms explores the relationship between empathy, intimacy and the contemporary representation of women. In an attempt to give women back their nakedness by untying the body from its sexual objectification, the author has travelled the world immortalizing women of different origins and social backgrounds, naked in their bedrooms. That intimate, magical, liberating place where self-discovery takes place, as Virginia Woolf recounts in A room of one’s own. The result of this visual research is a series of portraits and diary pages written by the author herself, that shed light on the complexity of a new global female gaze which is challenging gender dichotomies and pre-established categories.
«Perhaps In her rooms, more than being the portrait of women in their rooms, is a journey from me to them and back, it is the crossroads of our destinies. And isn’t that also how we can talk about a changing society? By beginning from an individual life that mixes with other lives, am I not also talking about what it means to be a woman today? And to think that’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s just that I thought I would do it by writing novels. Who knows how much more I can learn about photography just by continuing to live. »
«I begin from them because I am convinced that these “normal” everyday stories, undervalued because they don’t have the defect of suffering or the prestige of fame, protect the new seeds of evolution that I hope our planet will one day see. » — Maria Clara Macrì
In her rooms has also become a visual experience, with an exhibition curated by Erik Kessels, running from 29 April - 12 June 2022 at Spazio Gerra, in the frame of Festival Fotografia Europea.
Maria Clara Macrì
(Reggio Emilia, 1987) is an Italian photographer. During her adolescence she began to take an interest in political and social issues, with particular attention to gender issues. After high school, she lived in Bologna where she graduated in Contemporary World History in 2010 and continued her personal research on the historical and visual representation of female gender. She moved to London in 2012 and here she approached photography for the first time. After her stay in London and a brief period of nomadism, she settled in Naples from 2015 until 2017. During the Neapolitan period Maria Clara began to select her female subjects in the streets and to experiment with them a relationship between empathy, intimacy and female representation through photography, portraying them in her apartment used as a studio. In 2017 she moved back to Reggio Emilia, where through the echo she received thanks to Instagram, different women, strangers and not, began to come and find her spontaneously, to be photographed and thus be part of her visual research project on women. In 2018 Maria Clara decided to expand the project by including research on the environments where contemporary women live their intimacy and personal freedom: their rooms. She began to travel from New York to Los Angeles, from London to Paris, Milan, to be able to meet women from other cultures and other countries, and cross her lonely path, and therefore her destiny, with them.
Maria Clara Macrì has been nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award 2019, nominated in the i-D Global list of the 20 photographers to follow in 2020. Her work has been featured in New Queer Photography Book 2020 published by Verlag Kettler, and international magazines among which iD, Vogue, Vice, Dazed.
In 2021 she is the protagonist of one episode of the docu-series Le Fotografe, produced by Sky.
Ana Corderot, Fisheye Magazine, 08/01/2022
«In Her Rooms»: journaux intimes de femmes en fleurs
Redazione, Internazionale, 12/10/2021
Destini incrociati
Veronica Costanza Ward, Vogue, 07/10/2021
Le infinite stanze delle donne. Intervista a Maria Clara Macrì
Juule Kay, i-D Vice, 06/08/2021
Intimate photographs of women in their bedrooms around the world

Maria Clara Macrì
In her rooms (eng)

Carlo Gianferro
Gypsy Interiors

Marialba Russo
Travestimento

Liliana Barchiesi
Donne è bello

AA.VV.
ReSignifications

Eleonora Calvelli
In bloom

Francesco Francaviglia
Le donne del digiuno

Silvia Camporesi
Domestica

Annette Schreyer
Same but not

Stefano Giogli
L' unico eri tu

Laura Salvinelli