Ciao!
My name is Luisa Beorchia, and
I am an Italian student based in Paris. With a naturally curious and open-minded disposition, I work in writing, creative writing, photography, editorial design, archive research, project management and production.
If you'd like to read some of my articles for Vogue Italia, you can find them here
If you'd like to see things that I’m keeping my eyes (and mind) on, you can find them here
If you'd like to know more about me, you can click here.
lbeorchia@ifm-paris.fr
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This is my cabinet of thoughts, ideas, images, data, aesthetics, ethics, maybe questions...
After the precious advice of Giovanni Stoppoloni, I started to collect everything that I find interesting, so I can keep it in mind and never forget.
Qualcosa che ho scritto pensando alla versione di me che vorrei essere:
“Era bella perché le qualità della sua presenza e del suo ascolto facevano emergere chi si avvicinava.
Aveva questo modo di spogliare le persone dall'imbarazzo di essere se stesse per restituirle alla loro parte più viva, più autentica, più segreta.
Forse questo è il modo giusto di amare il prossimo“
I love Paris. I think it is so unapologetically cool, in a way that is profound and shallow at the same time. When I first arrived, it hitted me like a storm.
YSL adv 1999 - 2000
Deborah Tuberville.
How can I describe photographic style? A broken gaze on reality.
A couple of words about her. Deborah The first thing to say is that she changed the way we see fashion photography. Born in 1932, she rose to prominence in the 1970s with a style that was soft, mysterious, and full of atmosphere. At a time when fashion images were all about perfection and glamour, hers felt quiet, poetic, and deeply human. Her seminal 1975 Bathhouse series for Vogue, set in crumbling, ghostlike interiors, offered an entirely new gaze on femininity. It created controversy, but more importantly, it marked the arrival of a photographic auteur.The images were unusual and sparked debate, but they made her name. In 1981, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked her to photograph the Palace of Versailles. The result was Unseen Versailles, a haunting and beautiful book that won an American Book Award and showed her gift for finding beauty in places touched by time.
The sun will folow you wherever you are - because you and th sun are the same thing.
Le persone vogliono essere descritte, sentirsi nella voce di altri, trovare una romantica e complicata rappresentazione di sé. C’è questa cosa che si chiama “profilo”, da quello che ho capito sarebbe una sorta di estetizzazione delle forme caratteriali da persona a personaggio. Vorrei che qualcuno lo facesse con me, anche se a volte penso che il mio stesso modo di vedere il mondo sia l’estetizazzione di un personaggio. Questo personaggio forse non esiste, o forse ancora peggio, esiste e sono diventa aio medesima. Chissà. Per foruna non ho ancora 25 anni.
Nella Roma del boom economico, tutti volevano che fossi un'idea, e tu sei diventata te stessa. In una città chiassosa e piena di contrasti, la tua ingenuità è la tua luce, la tua curiosità la tua forza. Ho sempre pensato di dover invecchiare prima del tempo, raccontarmi vissuta ed esperta di tutti i fatti del mondo, ma non è la cosa giusta da fare. Io la conoscevo bene mi ha ricordato quanto è bello vedere le cose per la prima volta – che non è solo una condizione – è un privilegio. Mi sono rivista in Adriana, e ho provato una certa tenerezza verso me stessa. Spero di avere ancora tante cose da vedere per la prima volta.
In the Rome of the economic boom, everyone wanted you to be an idea, but then you became yourself. In a city that is noisy and full of contrasts, your innocence is your light, and your curiosity is your strength. I always thought I had to grow up quickly and to present myself as someone extremely experienced in all the world’s matters, but that’s not the right way.
Io la conoscevo bene reminded me of how beautiful it is to see things for the first time – and it's not just a condition, it's a privilege. I saw myself in Adriana and felt a certain tenderness toward myself.
I hope there are still many things left for me to see for the first time.
I recently had the opportunity to visit an incredible exhibition in Trieste titled “Fotografia Wulz. Trieste, la famiglia, l’atelier” , dedicated to the pioneering photographic work of the Wulz family. My attention was mostly captured by Wanda Wulz, the granddaughter of Giuseppe Wulz (who founded the family’s studio in 1868). Wanda, alongside her sister Marion, carried on the family legacy after their father's passing in 1928, managing the studio until their retirement in 1981. Wanda Wulz is particularly famous for her work in portrait photography, togheter with her involvement in the Italian Futurist movement in the 1930s. One of her most iconic works is the self-portrait Io + gatto (Cat and I) from 1932, which combines images of her face and that of her cat, resulting in a surreal, dreamlike image. Oh, to be a young artist in the 30s, dancing in Trieste in the house of Marion and Wanda Wulz, togheter with Anita Pittoni and all these amazing women...
Masculinities:
Liberation throught photographyI recently discovered this exhibition hosted by the Barbican Art Gallery in July 2020. “Masculinities: Liberation throught photography” offers a complex exploration of how masculinity has been experienced, performed, coded, and socially constructed, as captured through photography and film from the 1960s to the present day. I took some time to research more about the exhibition, which features over 300 works by more than 50 pioneering international artists, photographers, and filmmakers, including names such as Richard Avedon, Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Annette Messager, togheter with some younger and lesser-known artists, some of whom are exhibiting in the UK for the first time (Cassils, Elle Pérez, and Hank Willis Thomas...). Through its six thematic sections, the exhibition delves into diverse and intricate representations of masculinity, touching on themes like identity, body, power and fatherhood, hypermasculinity and patriarchy. It portrays masculinity not as a fixed idea, but as a concept shaped by cultural and social forces.
Podcasts for everyday life There’s always some noise in my head. When the space gets too quiet, I start to feel sad (even a little empty). That’s why I’m always listening to something.
Here’s a selection of my favorite podcasts. I truly love them; they are engaging, insightful, and (really) well-done.
For the morning:
L’Heure du Monde (news, by Le Monde), in french
The Essential (daily commentary, by Mia Ceran), in italian
For the afternoon:
Stories (narrative storytelling, by Cecilia Sala), in italian
Modern Love (heartfelt essays on relationships, by The New York Times), in english
For the evening:
Indagini (true crime, by Stefano Nazzi), in italian
Globo (history and geopolitics, by Eugenio Cau), in italian
For everytime:
Stylezeitgest, by Eugene Rabkin
Dressed: The History of Fashion by April Calahan and Cassidy Zachar
The second wave of feminism and one thousand reasons why fashion sucksI wrote a short essay on the second wave of feminism and the desire to fight fashion, beauty and femininity. In my research, I discovered a lot of things.
The first is that in 1969 a group of women gathered outside the Miss America beauty pageant and decided to protest by throwing their bras (and many other feminine items) into a bin, which they later called the "Freedom Trash Can." The second is that in 1963 an American writer named Betty Friedan wrote a book titled The Feminine Mystique, explaining something that she definred "the problem that has no name." This problem was a “malaise” affecting seemingly happy women, housewives with perfect lives, mothers of families. The issue was that they felt depressed, and empty, but most of all, unsure of the meaning of their existence. In her book, Friedan suggests that the root of this problem was their lack of freedom, self-determination, and personal fulfillment. Women weren’t asking themselves what they wanted to be, but rather with whom they wanted to be.
There are some other interesting things I discovered, all connected to feminism and this notion that in order to empower oneself, women must necessarily abandon femininity, beauty, and aesthetics. Some argue that rejecting traditional beauty standards is the only way to escape the societal expectations, while some others reclaim beauty and fashion as tools of power and self-expression. This tension between rejecting and reclaiming beauty is interesting and complex, and I feel it’s extremely relevant also today. There’s so much more to explore in this discussion, but I don’t want to make it overly long.
To conclude: beauty it’s either a trap or a weapon. .