Fiction. Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon. "I believe there is a miracle in Wanda," wrote Marguerite Duras of the only film American actress Barbara Loden ever wrote and directed. "Usually, there is a distance between representation and text, subject and action. Here that distance is completely eradicated." It is perhaps this "miracle"―the seeming collapse of fiction and fact―that has made Wanda (1970) a subject of fascination for artists from Isabelle Huppert to Rachel Kushner to Kate Zambreno, and that set acclaimed French writer Nathalie Léger on an obsessive quest across continents, into archives, and through mining towns of Pennsylvania trying to get closer to the film and its maker. SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN is the magnificent result. Moving contrapuntally between biography and auto-fiction, film criticism and anecdote, fact and speculation, SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN is a stunning meditation on knowledge and self-knowledge, on the surfaces of life and art, and how we come to truth―a kind of truth―not through facts alone but through acts of the imagination.

Suite for Barbara Loden

Humor & Entertainment

Léger, Nathalie

Movies

Dorothy, a publishing project

Fiction. Art. Photography. Biography. Memoir. EXPOSITION is the first in a triptych of books by the award-winning writer and archivist Nathalie Léger that includes&nbsp;SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN and THE WHITE DRESS. In each, Léger sets the story of a female artist against the background of her own life and research--an archivist's journey into the self, into the lives that history hides from us. Here, Léger's subject is the Countess of Castiglione (1837-1899), who at the dawn of photography dedicated herself to becoming the most photographed woman in the world, modeling for hundreds of photos, including "Scherzo di Follia," among the most famous in history. Set long before our own "selfie" age,&nbsp;EXPOSITION&nbsp;is a remarkably modern investigation into the curses of beauty, fame, vanity, and age, as well as the obsessive drive to control and commodify one's image.

Exposition

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Winner of a 2020 French Voices Award Fiction. Performance Art. Biography. Memoir. THE WHITE DRESS is the third in Nathalie Léger's award-winning triptych of books about women who "through their oeuvre, transform their lives into a mystery" (ELLE). In EXPOSITION, Léger wrote about the Countess of Castiglione, the most photographed woman of the nineteenth century; in SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN she took up the actress and filmmaker Barbara Loden; here, Léger grapples with the tragic 2008 death of Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, who was raped and murdered while hiking from Italy to the Middle East in a wedding dress to promote world peace. A harrowing meditation on the risks women encounter, in life and in art, THE WHITE DRESS also brings to a haunting conclusion Léger's personal interrogation--sustained across all three books--of her relationship with her mother and the desire for justice in our lives.

The White Dress

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Les Fugitives

White Dress

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

R/B. Roland Barthes

Alphant, Marianne

SEUIL

Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden

Contemporary

Фоліо

La robe blanche

Literary

La robe blanche (French Edition)

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Books by Léger, Nathalie