Franca Sozzani’s Legacy Continues in Franca: Chaos and Creation

“You either understand the power of what she did or you don’t,” the 36-year-old photographer and filmmaker Francesco Carrozzini says. He’s referring to his mother, the late editor in chief of Vogue Italia, Franca Sozzani. “Being an editor is much like being a director—there’s nothing you practically do, but in the end, you do everything.” In 2010, Carrozzini set out to capture that “everything” in Franca: Chaos and Creation, a probing documentary released in 2016. But in the wake of Sozzani’s death that December, Carrozzini felt that there was more still to explain.

In March, Franca: Chaos and Creation (Assouline) continues her story, with Sozzani’s vast web of friends and collaborators now brought to the fore. “[The film] was very much told from my point of view,” Carrozzini says, “so for the book, I put myself to the side and gave voice to those who didn’t speak.” He’s placed a particular emphasis on photographers—Steven Meisel, Peter Lindbergh, the late Deborah Turbeville, Tim Walker, and others—whose startlingly original imagery (generously sampled in the book) became Sozzani’s calling card. “This book is as much about Franca’s friends as it is about her,” Carrozzini says. “They made her who she was.”

In the end, the book is both a companion piece to the documentary and an homage all its own. “One was to celebrate, and the other was to remember,” Carrozzini says, “but they both do both.”