Professor Gloria Marco Munuera (ISI Florence) recently collaborated on Giorgio Bonomi’s volume Il corpo solitario. L’autoscatto nella fotografia contemporanea. Volume IV (“The Solitary Body. The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography. Volume IV”), published by Rubbettino Editore (Soveria Mannelli) in 2025. In addition to being the author of important studies on the history of political thought in the twentieth century, Bonomi is now recognized as one of the leading Italian critics of contemporary art. For his latest publication, Professor Munuera contributed a series of photographs from 2021, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s famous essay “A Room of One’s Own”.

The artist recollects her inspiration and the narrative behind the photography project, as follows: “A room of my own represents the need to have one’s own, intimate, non-shared physical space, where I can be fully myself. I want to possess the physical limits of the personal space that surrounds me in order to guard the walls of my freedom. In these self-portraits I take possession of an ‘almost empty’ space made up of lights and shadows which, even if it belongs to me, is never mine. The constant presence of others in everyday life, even through a simple glance, denies me the possibility of isolating myself and connecting with myself. I want a place – metaphorically and literally – where I can develop my living space, where I can create; I want a home that is the mirror of me.

The title of this photographic series clearly echoes Virginia Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own, in which the writer claimed the need for space for women within the literary tradition historically dominated by men.”