In Snow, Vanessa Winship's latest monograph, we see that what is not fully understood is much more convincing than what is well understood . It may be a truism, but it is one that is rejuvenated and refreshed with each new and quirky narrative. This book is such a revelation.
Snow's origins lie in a commission (this one from an artist who rarely works for commission, although Winship says she often approaches things "as if someone had sent me somehow"), but the photographer's interest in what he found was soon eclipsed. anything that can be properly thought of as a "story". So she made repeated trips to a particular landscape, and, in particular, to a particular season, to understand what had puzzled her in the initial making of these photographs.
Winship is well known and highly regarded for her intimate portraits, but in Snow we experience a remarkable physical distance between the photographer and her subjects . The little that the viewer can capture is the subtle repetition of the most humble elements of the earth. Collectively, the images come to embody the artist's struggle to connect with and make sense of this place, while ultimately acknowledging that she, like all of us, is nothing more than a stranger in this world. This estrangement is reflected in a piece of fiction, by poet and novelist Jem Poster, that weaves through Snow. It talks about a portrait photographer and her recalcitrant subject matter. But this character is not Winship, and the model is not someone in a photograph of Winship. Poster's is fiction grounded in imaginative construction: another beguiling layer in a complicated book that always seeks to expose the slipperiness of the narrative and destabilize easy reads.
104 pages;
19x25cm;
Soft cover.
Tritone and 4 color compensation.
