Vrouwen van Rome

Published by Bruna in Utrecht in 1959, Vrouwen van Rome is Sam Waagenaar’s photographic portrait of women in the city he made his home from 1946. Waagenaar assembled thematic photobooks from photographs of women and children made during his travels and had a particular interest in portraiture; in this volume that practice becomes a city-specific study, accompanied by a contribution from Alberto Moravia. The cover’s layered black-and-white female portraits underscore the book’s focus on individual faces and figures rather than Rome’s monuments. The International Center of Photography Library catalogs the volume under both Waagenaar and Moravia.