Photobooks are a way to bring the work of our favourite artists into our homes. More than a single frame or a lone image, they reveal whole narratives, telling stories of communities, countries or individual lives. By capturing snapshots of real lived experiences and binding them into one volume, artists can draw attention to people often overlooked in society. These five new photobooks are timely and urgent, telling us something about our society and painting intimate, tender portraits of the power of community, the persevering love between family and friends and what happens when this is degraded. 

Bury Me in the Back Forty: Kyler Zeleny 

For over a decade, Kyler Zeleny has been documenting his hometown, a rural community of the Canadian Prairies with deep Ukrainian roots, made up of 915 people. Bury Me in the Back Forty is the final in his trio of monographs, following on from Out West and Crown Ditch. His series Broken Road, which brought together work focusing on 160 small rural communities, was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2014. His most recent book is based on the idea that the story of any place evolves over time. It uses photos, collected objects and community archives to revise a history book of his town published in 1980. He blends official and the unofficial accounts, tapping into local knowledge and passed-down anecdotes. This combination of history and lived experience creates “a community album that contains not only the roses but also the numerous thorns attached to each stem.” What makes Zeleny’s work so powerful is its universality, at once intensely familiar to all those who grew up in small towns across the world, and yet simultaneously completely unique in his own experience. 

I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now 

I’m So Happy You Are Here presents a much-needed critical and celebratory counterpoint to the established canon of Japanese photography. It showcases a wide range of photographic approaches on the lived experiences and perspectives of women in the country. With 25 artist portfolios and more than five hundred images, the volume is a sweeping and electrifying expansion of our understanding of photo history. The artists included are some of the most influential in the media, representing a huge variety of voices, approaches and generations. They include names like Hara Mikiko, Katayama Mari, Ninagawa Mika, Sawafa Tomoko and Wantanabe Hitomi. This photobook is part of a much needed effort within the creative industries to fill critical gaps in its historiography, excavating and recovering women’s work as a testament to the liberating nature of self-representation and self-expression. These photographs represent a vital part of being human – to see, be seen and have our voices heard. 

Big Sky: Adam Ferguson

The Australian outback makes up more than 73% of the country’s territory, spanning over 2 million square miles. Yet, it is only inhabited by 5% of its population of 24 million. It is this sparsely occupied land that Adam Ferguson has surveyed over the course of ten years. His work depicts fading traditional events, shrinking small towns, Aboriginal connections to the country, the impacts of globalization and the adversity of climate change to illustrate the realities of contemporary life in the outback. His work is inspired by Richard Avedon’s project In the American West, which shattered long-held notions of the region of the US. Ferguson paints an honest picture of the relationship between people and the landscape. He saidt: “After years of living and photographing abroad, I embarked on this body of work in an attempt to understand a place I had left behind. The country’s occupation and colonial legacy has meant a deep dispossession of traditional custodians from their lands, language and culture. And while the modern Australian state has progressed, the land has been plundered.” 

JML NYC 02-23: Joseph Michael Lopez

Joseph Michael Lopez’s photographs are distinct in the way that they capture movement. His New York is a place of constant motion, as people flit in and out of the frame of his camera, caught in a transient moment as they hurry from one place to another. This photobook brings together two decades of work that places the feeling of the city at its heart. The artist was born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a mother who escaped the Cuban revolution in 1967. Each of his pictures is carefully composed of an untold story, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks of what is happening before and after the shot. A man sprawls on the floor of a train, a shard of light falls on park railings, a child cries whilst being carried down subway steps, a couple get lost in each other. His work is not about the realities of the city, it’s about the fleeting, intimate moments that make up the lives of those who inhabit it. It’s about how he sees his home city of New York in his own heart and mind.

---

Words: Emma Jacob

---

Image Credits: