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The Green Heart of Italy - Umbria and its Ancient Neighbors

Nestled in the center of the country, lush and verdant Umbria often is called The Green Heart of Italy and ‘Tuscany without the tourists.’ Now, in the post-Covid re-boot of Italy’s huge tourist industry, Umbria is poised to become the country’s next great travel destination.

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Recovered Memory: New York & Paris 1960-1980

Frank Van Riper’s bestselling documentary-cum-memoir about two of the world’s great cities, reflected in his vivid BxW vintage photographs and eloquent contemporary text. A meditation on time and place, when you could tour the Eiffel Tower without seeing police and automatic weapons; when the Coney Island Parachute ride still thrilled thousands. With a foreword by bestselling author Martin Walker.

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Glowing reviews for The Green Heart of Italy:

"When I see that Frank Van Riper and Judith Goodman have finished their Umbria book, I'm taken with both envy and excitement.  Envy because I know that they are serious journalists first and foremost, and that means they have really travelled the backroads, the byways of Umbria to produce this wonderful project.  And anyone with a hint of visual understanding will know that beauty - both visual and human - rests behind each turn on the Umbrian country roads.  I have spent just enough time in Umbria to know where my fave places are, and can't wait to track down theirs, and compare notes.  Frank is right: Umbria is the next big thing, and this poem of
love to the people, the rich culture, and the best eating in the world, is
coming at just the right time."

--David Burnett, award-winning photojournalist and author;
co-founder, Contact Press Images

"The mysterious landlocked heart of Italy, the old papal state of Umbria sprawls and nestles across the Apennines mountain chain, a fabulous mixture of vineyards and truffles, high tech and arts festivals, Roman theatres and medieval churches. There could be no better guide to this beguiling region that remains off the main tourist track than veteran journalist and photographer Frank Van Riper, who has been chronicling his and his wife's love affair over the past decade and more with Umbria, the only province in Europe named for the color its rich earth produced."

--Martin Walker,journalist and foreign policy scholar, author of the bestselling ‘Bruno’ series of crime novels set in the Perigord region of France.

Rave reviews for Recovered Memory:

The New York Times (pay wall)

The Washington Post (pay wall)

Musee Magazine

ASMP Magazine

Go to the Goodman/Van Riper Photography site

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Frank Van Riper and Judith Goodman

Frank Van Riper and Judith Goodman are husband and wife documentary and fine art photographers, whose work has been published internationally. Goodman’s photography has hung in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Baltimore Museum; she also is an award-winning assemblage sculptor and a member of the Washington Sculptors’ Group. Van Riper’s photography is in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC) as well as the Portland Gallery of Art (Portland, ME.) His 1998 book of photography and essays, Down East Maine/A World Apart, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the silver award for photography from the Art Director’s Club of Metropolitan Washington. His current book is Recovered Memory: New York & Paris 1960-1980.

Goodman and Van Riper are the co-authors of Serenissima: Venice in Winter, an internationally bestselling coffee table book of black and white photographs and essays that was published in the United States and in Italy.

Frank Van Riper also is a widely read online photography columnist  (www.TalkingPhotography.com) and for nineteen years was the photography columnist of the Washington Post. Before that he served as White House correspondent, national political correspondent and Washington Bureau news editor of the New York Daily News. He was a 1979 Nieman Fellow at Harvard and holds the 1980 Merriman Smith Award (with the late Lars-Erik Nelson) from the White House Correspondents Association.

Van Riper is a popular teacher and lecturer, and is on the faculty of PhotoWorks at Glen Echo Park, Md. He has lectured widely, including at the Maine Photographic Workshops and the Smithsonian Resident Associate program. In 2007 he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Maine at Machias for his “outstanding career in journalism and photography” and in 2011 was inducted into the City College of New York Communications Alumni Hall of Fame.

Goodman and Van Riper jointly taught photography workshops in the US and in Italy: The Lubec Photo Workshops at SummerKeys (Lubec, ME) and, in Italy, the Umbria Photo Workshops, as well as Unseen Serenissima: The Venice in Winter Photo Workshops (www.GVRphoto.com).

Theylive in Washington, DC.

Photo Credit: © Fritz Gibbon