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4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
A well traveled and well read artist, these photographs and observations are an intimate look into Smith's world and values.
If you like Patti Smith, or photography, or art, or poetry, or history, this book is for you. Like the author, just f-ing cool.
A moving portrait of Smith's obsessions, loves, and memories. She has been taking photos for decades, mostly with her Polaroid camera and, when they stopped making film for it, her cell phone. With her characteristic aplomb and not giving a damn what you or anyone may think of her, she lays bare her thoughts and dreams in 366 images with captions. This is not fine photography, nor is it meant to be. It is rather more like a travelogue of one person's journey and those people and things that have touched her along the way. As with many great artists, like attracts like and we are given glimpses into Smith's friendship with such luminaries as Sam Shepard, William Burroughs, Robert Mapplethorpe, Fred "Sonic" Smith (her late husband), and Allen Ginsburg. A lovely little tome.
I was hoping this would be more of a collection of Patti’s film photography, but it’s essentially just her Instagram feed, over the course of 1 year, bound in a book. While I admire that she chooses to honor previous legends and friends on their birth/death days, I didn’t feel any intrinsic connection to those entries at all and would’ve preferred seeing other artistic shots and writing
I have loved her prose books and highly recommend them. This is a different artistic foray, but just as enjoyable. She goes through a 366-day calendar, not wanting to exclude those with birthdays or who celebrate leap-year day. Each day has a photograph from her work or collect that is relevant to the day. The are statements, sometimes a long paragraph, about each. The topics vary from places she visited to her numerous friends and family. Very thought stimulating and there were several authors she mention who I now want to read (in one of her prose books, she wrote glowingly of Robert Bola~no, the Chilean-born author and I have read a dozen of his books since then - as an aside The Savage Detectives and 2666 are very good books).
I do not use instagram so I was not aware of these little moments in Patti’s life, the parts of her brain she deems important. There is so much beauty in the mundane.