IUZZA by Francesca Todde tells the story of an encounter, a night sea crossing in search of Goliarda Sapienza. “Iuzza” is the loving childhood nickname given to the writer back in Sicily, where she came into the world in 1924. The crooked symmetry between her biography and her work is filled with invisible presences: the vigour of her literary adventure resembles a treasure salvaged from a wreckage. Starting from Sapienza's novels, poems, short stories, letters and personal records, IUZZA unravels as an intimate journey triggered by antagonistic forces, subverting the nature of forms and turning words into images. The sequence of images consists of seven sections that operate through temporal displacement, textual references and concatenated events. Each part originates from an indirect dialogue with her absence, as a sort of telepathic exchange through empty space aimed at magnifying the perception of emotional connections. Francesca Todde's photographs are like inner landscapes, or animated spaces leaping across the blurred lines of memory. Her gaze through the lens seems to open onto a deserted bustle, following faded footprints up to their origin, which is childish and ancestral, animal and mineral: these images are traces haunted by the feeling that the body is everywhere. (From the Afterword by Luca Reffo)

Supported by Collezione Donata Pizzi

Shortlisted for the Arles Prix du Livre 2025 (Livre d'Auteur)

Special Mention of the Jury at the Prix Bob Calle 2025

Shortlisted for the PhotoEspaña Book Award 2025 (Bibliofilia)