Overview

An ecologically minded collection of essays in the vein of Rebecca Solnit and Susan Sontag-covering everything from the equipment of photography to the difficulties of perception itself. An ecologically minded collection of essays in the vein of Rebecca Solnit and Susan Sontag, covering everything from the equipment of photography to the difficulties of perception itself. In The Picture Not Taken, the photographer and writer Benjamin Swett considers the intersections between photography, memory, the natural world, and the course of life in essays on subjects that include family snapshots, images of racial violence, the shape of abiding love, and the experience of unforseen and irremediable loss. In these beautifully written, deeply affecting pages, Swett moves with a wonderful improvisatory freedom among his chosen themes. The Picture Not Taken is a book of transfixing pieces that possesses the intensity and integrity and heft of the wholly new.

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9781681378633

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Reviews

"“This marvellous meditation on memory and seeing asks us, with a rare power, to take nothing for granted.” —Amit Chaudhuri ""In this astute, stealthily devastating book, writer and photographer Benjamin Swett beautifully conveys not only what he sees through the iris of the camera lens, but the complex, infinite imperatives of the biosphere outside the frame. A subtle re-imagining of the possibilities of the American essay, The Picture Not Taken is a haunting meditation on the visible world and the cast shadow of tragedy."" —Cynthia Zarin “Serious photography is an art. The ‘taken’ tells on the ‘taker.’ Beautifully written, Benjamin Swett’s The Picture Not Taken shows how an awareness becomes a passion, and that passion a calling. His avid eye reorganizes our attention, elevates the incidental, and fastens on the details that replenish the world around us."" —Sven Birkerts"

"""In this astute, stealthily devastating book, writer and photographer Benjamin Swett beautifully conveys not only what he sees through the iris of the camera lens, but the complex, infinite imperatives of the biosphere outside the frame. A subtle re-imagining of the possibilities of the American essay, The Picture Not Taken is a haunting meditation on the visible world and the cast shadow of tragedy."" —Cynthia Zarin"

Author Information

Benjamin Swett is the author of Route 22 and New York City of Trees, which won the 2013 New York City Book Award for Photography. He teaches writing at the City College of New York and was named the Larry Lederman Photography Fellow at the New York Botanical Garden for 2024.

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