I Imagined It Empty
This is the story of a farewell: the last days the author and her mother spent together, and the images she took years later in a beautiful, simple house, inspired by those moments.
A poetic, nostalgic and poignant contemplation of loss and the transitory nature of life, as well as the desire to find solace and presence within the walls of the place we choose to call home, suggesting the idea that our houses hold the spirit of our loved ones by filling the space with memories.
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Winner of the 3rd edition of the Star Photobook Dummy Award organised by the Photographic Social Vision Foundation in memory of Inés Casals, talented photobook designer and art director who prematurely passed away in 2020.
The emotional and intimate mood and the beauty of the everyday are in harmony with the values that the Star Photobook Dummy Award wants to celebrate.
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Specifications
First edition: 1000 copies
Photographs and text (in English): Ruth Lauer Manenti
Edition: Ruth Lauer Manenti and Ramon Pez
Design: Ramon Pez
Pre-press and printing: L'Artiere (Italy)
20,5 x 28 cm
36 duotone UV LED photographs
72 pages
Hardcover, fabric-covered and printed
Publication date: April 2024---
About the author
Ruth Lauer Manenti is a first generation American whose parents arrived from Europe as refugees during World War II. Ruth’s background is in drawing and painting. She received an MFA from The Yale School of Art in 1995.
In 2012, she was given a large format camera and taught herself how to use it in a way that utilized her skills as a painter. Her mother was also an artist who left behind a legacy of unknown work. Part of Ruth’s ambitions as an artist is to reward her mother for her efforts and create a continuum. Ruth was awarded a NYFA grant in photography in 2016 and her book Remnants was included in an exhibition at The Griffin Museum of Photography. She had a solo exhibition at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY in 2020.
Her father found beauty in a hole in his shirt; in the way that it spoke of impermanence and fragility. Her mother was grateful that there was a tree she could admire from the kitchen window while washing dishes. Her parents endured a lot of suffering yet lived with poetic sensibilities that Ruth has inherited from them. Since breaking her neck in a car crash at the age of twenty, she developed a spiritual life and practice that is integrated into her photographic work.
She lives in the Catskill Mountains, NY with her husband, a nurse and tai chi practitioner and their 3 cats.