October 30, 2025 ~ 5 PM
The Italian Cultural Institute of Washington presents “The Green Heart of Italy. Umbria and its Ancient Neighbors” a book by Judith Goodman and Frank Van Riper.
Join us and the authors to discover lush and verdant Umbria, a region that is becoming more and more one of the most sought after destinations of international tourists.
Judith Goodman and Frank Van Riper’s book explores this travel destination in an evocative way thanks to their photographs, direct experiences, and eloquent stories. They help bring this central area of Italy to life, showcasing its glorious vistas, artists’ studios, private palazzi, rustic cafes, public squares, and so much more.
The book presentation will be held in English.
LOCATION
Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven Street NW
Washington, DC 20008
Click on button below for availability
REGISTRATION REQUIRED AND ACCEPTED EXCLUSIVELY THROUGH EVENTBRITE
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Judith Goodman and Frank Van Riper 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, Maine.) 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).
They live in Washington, DC.
“Almost all accounts of my country fall into two categories: chronicles of a love affair, or diaries of a disappointment. The Green Heart of Italy avoids both traps. It’s a passionate portrait of Umbria, a small, landlocked region in the very center of the country. Because, you know, Italy is not one gigantic Tuscany, with a foreigner under every olive tree”.
~ Beppe Severgnini, internationally acclaimed journalist and author.