2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message ‘Hello Everybody!’ 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 Smithas world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books sheas reading, the graves of beloved heroes, William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smithas unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to this book are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a motheras keychain, and a husbandas Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are never-before-seen photos of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafes, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world. With 365 photographs, taking you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process, A Book of Days is a timeless offering for deeply uncertain times, an inspirational map of an artist’s life.
