FIRST EDITION. HAND-SIGNED. ONE PRINTING, EVER.

One thousand copies were made. Each one is signed. When this run is gone, there will not be another.

THE INTERVIEW

She answers before the first ring finishes, still catching her breath from a walk to the market, six thousand miles and thirty years away from where this story begins. Historian by training, photographer by accident, publisher because no one else was going to do it for her: this is the story behind the First Edition, in her own words.

ON BEGINNING

  • "I looked into the business of publishing and found hundreds of thousands of people trying to do exactly what I wanted to do. It seemed insurmountable, so I hired the best editor I could find and built the rest myself."

  • I'm a trained historian. I know how to research.

ON VENICE

  • "I've always loved classical art — I think I'm the only one in my family who does. Italy was the only way to really understand where the Renaissance was born.”

  • "I knew I'd be away in classes and on study trips, so I brought [my mother] along too. We went back and forth for almost two years, more times than I can count."

  • Every morning I went out alone with my camera before anyone else woke up. I had no intention of doing anything with those photographs.

    I just couldn't stop taking them.

Why doors, specifically?

"A mentor looked at my photographs and told me they were beautiful, but that they'd mean so much more with real research behind each one. That idea never left me."

The door on your cover has quite a story.

"It turned out to be a working upholstery shop. I sat down on the ground across the canal and just stared at it, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be."

These aren't the doors tourists photograph.

"There isn't one inch of Venice that doesn't move me. Every door I chose was hidden behind the tourist spots, and every single one had a story."

Did anyone else see what you were seeing?

"I walked my own mentor past every site in this book, and he saw nothing. That's when I understood I see the world differently than everyone else."

ON THE BOOK

What made you sure this had to become a book, and not just photographs you kept for yourself?

“I'm struck by how differently I see things from other people. I'll look at a door, a flower, anything… and I'll stay with it for days.”