Patti Smith to release new book inspired by her Instagram, ‘A Book Of Days’
Punk poet Patti Smith is an active Instagram user, regularly posting images of herself or the things that she loves. With one million followers on her account, she has decided to make a book inspired by its popularity.
A Book of Days will contain over 365 photographs taken on film. A description of the book reads, “Known for shooting with her beloved Land Camera 250, Smith started posting images from her phone, including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots, and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books she’s reading, the graves of beloved heroes—William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus.”
Adding: “Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims.”
Furthermore, she continues: “Original to this book are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are photos from Smith’s archives of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafés, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world.”
However, this isn’t the first time that Smith has released her photographs in book format. In 2008, she released Land 50, the same year, she exhibited a collection of her photographs, drawings and writing at the Cartier Foundation in Paris. At the time, she said: “Sometimes if I crave silence, I turn to my Land 250. The experience of taking Polaroids connects me with the moment. They are souvenirs of a joyful solitude.”
In 2011 Smith released a book of Polaroids called Camera Solo, which includes images of William Blake’s death mask, Robert Mapplethorpe’s slippers, and Virginia Woolf’s bed. A Book of Days comes after Smith’s most recent book, Year of the Monkey, a memoir that continues in the same vein as Just Kids and M Train.
A Book of Days is set for release on November 15th, 2022, via Penguin Random House.
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