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. 

First edition: 700 copies | hardcover | 120 pages | linen bound with a photograph tipped-in | essay by Carlo McCormick | designed by Alexandra Bruns