MAKING IT REAL
2022 (b.frank books)
“The staged photographs in Marianna Rothen’s series, Making It Real, 2020, recall early feminist send-ups of femininity, from the campy performance works of Womanhouse to Cindy
Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills. Alternating between the look of 1970s-era amateur porn and surrealist still life, the work revels in its artifice.” Jane Ursula Harris
Self portraits with male mannequins & excerpts from Marianna’s teenage diary ages 12-16.
Hardcover | spiral bound | 58 pages | essays by Walter Robinson & Lissa Rivera, interview by Jane Ursula Harris
MAIL ORDER
2018 (b.frank books)
In her series Mail Order, the female characters of Marianna Rothen’s imaginary universe are shown for the first time in the company of men. Until now, men have remained decidedly
absent in Rothen’s images, but it seems as if in the current debate over gender politics, women’s rights and the Me Too movement, it is inalienable not to include men in the (greater)
picture. While for a century a male dominated Hollywood has often depicted women as objects and commodities, in Marianna Rothen’s book the tables have finally turned. No man in
Mail Order is real, they are all mannequins. As the title suggests, they are like sex dolls, objects, mail order partners. The female protagonist, played by Rothen herself, creates her
perfect man and makes him dress, pose and perform his manhood in the ways she demands. By flipping this power dynamic Rothen shows how deeply ingrained the expected roles
between women and men and their archetypes are.
Hardcover | 80 pages | fake leather with a photograph tipped-in | essays by Charlotte Jansen and William J. Simmons
SHADOWS IN PARADISE
2017 (b.frank books)
Shadows in Paradise is Marianna Rothen’s second monograph with b.frank books. The photographs in Shadows in Paradise reference three films: Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Robert
Altman’s Three Women and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. In Rothen’s female-helmed dream world her characters find and lose themselves. The images portray characters that
debuted in Rothen’s first and now sold out book Snow and Rose & Other Tales. When we last saw Rothen’s women they were dancing exuberantly in the nude, celebrating their male-
free utopia. Now we see them struggling to stay connected to their idealized notions of self, coping with their shattered illusions, falling deeper into derangement. This new series
explores life after happiness, it asks what it means to be a woman among women in a world where men are banished yet lurking.
Hardcover | 120 pages | linen bound with a photograph tipped-in | essay by Carlo McCormick
SNOW AND ROSE & OTHER TALES
2014 (b.frank books)
“Snow and Rose & other tales” is Marianna Rothen’s first monograph and showcases her work over the past few years. “In the lonely fortress of her domestic home, life is unbearable.”
With those dramatic words, the viewer is invited into the world created by Marianna Rothen, a fictional account of women who left the world of men behind and moved to a remote
and peaceful place to live amongst themselves. Rothen’s photographs are staged like homages to the films of Antonioni, Bergman or Godard; they seem like film stills and intrigue the
viewer to search for and identify the references. “Snow and Rose & other tales” is laid out like a movie, a slow transition from despair of a domestic life to freedom and independence.
Marianna Rothen’s photographs are both unsettling and sexy, humorous and serene, but above all, they are incredibly beautiful portraits of women.
Hardcover | 112 pages | linen bound with a photograph tipped-in and an elastic band
© Marianna Rothen - 2024