Eva: Eloge de Ma Fille

With her singular talent and unmistakable eye, Irina lonesco is the "grande dame" of French erotic photography. With over 12 books and countless international exhibitions to her credit, Irina lonesco's photographs of her young daughter Eva have been widely acclaimed since the 1970's. Honoring lonesco as "Woman of the Year" for Photography Year 1977, Time-Life Books featured three of her extraordinary Eva photos, adulating how "Sin and innocence, forbidden pleasures and the mortality of the flesh are conjured up in the haunting images of Irina lonesco.........Hers is a theatre of the Baroque." Eva: Eloge de ma Fille gathers over 130 photographs into the most definitive collection of Eva photographs ever published. With all Irina lonesco's earlier monographs now out of print and collectors' items, this new title by Alice Press is destined to become a classic. Never before in the history of photography has an artist of this magnitude photographed her child to such stunning effect. In the foreword, historian of photography Graham Ovenden urges that there should be no negative moral judgements towards photographs such as these, for these are photographs which show images of nudity "held in grace." We should view these images without the "immorality of prudery." Ionesco herself reminds us in the book's "Historical Background": "The photos could also be controversial. However, it is only a question of one's point of view...The liberty I took in baring her was innocent....In my gaze the greatest love of all took place." Weaving threads of baroque orientalism, gothic eroticism and surrealist fantasy, these mysterious photographs bear witness to a passionate love, a "dark love" as Ovendendescribes it, between Irina lonesco and her remarkable daughter Eva lonesco.