What if Jeff were a butterfly? Jeff Mermelstein Void
16,8 x 23 cm 224 pages With many unseen and personal archives from Jeff Screenprinted Hardcover ISBN 978-618-5479-44-2
Jeff Mermelstein has spent decades photographing life on the streets of New York. In this book, he turns the camera inward, beginning with flowers: perhaps the most photographed subject in history, and possibly the most avoided (for that very reason). From there, the work unfolds through pages of journals, family snapshots, phone notes, and previously unseen prints, drawn from an intimate investigation of Jeff’s archive and personal memorabilia. Together, they form a quiet portrait of attention, finding beauty in the everyday and meaning in the small things that make up a life.
This book was born from over two hundred images of flowers—an unexpected output for Jeff Mermelstein has been making photographs on the streets of New York for decades. Mermelstein brought the photographs to Void with the idea of making them into a book. During discussions, Mermelstein’s compulsion to photograph flowers was likened to the predilections of a butterfly. The book’s title and content evolved both from this idea and the recognition of the similarity between the behaviour of winged insects and those who photograph on the street. Both moving quickly and erratically from one attractive thing to the next, albeit from street corner to street corner or from flower to flower. The quickness of observing, landing, and leaving.
