revolutionary normalcy.
Thirteen years photographing Black life on an ordinary Tuesday — the day the archive never bothered to keep.
the archive kept our worst days and our best days. it threw away the Tuesday.
Nobody fights to preserve an ordinary afternoon. That is exactly why it goes first.
My grandparents were sharecroppers. There are records of them — land records, labor records, a line in a census. What there aren't are pictures. Not my grandmother laughing on a Sunday. Not anybody's kids just playing in the yard.
The camera came for us when we were suffering and when we were exceptional. It skipped everything in between. And everything in between is where the life was.
So I spent thirteen years with film cameras — some older than I am — photographing the in-between. A girl eating ice cream in Brooklyn. Double dutch in a warehouse on a Saturday. Nobody making history. Everybody just being.
I'm printing it a third time because the ground moved underneath it. Books are coming off shelves. History is being edited out of classrooms. Neighborhoods are being emptied out. The photographs haven't changed. What they mean has.
248 pages. no one in them is making history.
Shot on film across Havana, Nashville, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit. Nothing retouched, nothing staged, nothing reshot — you get the frame once.
the gutter is part of the picture.
Spreads photographed flat, uncropped. Sequencing matters as much as any single frame — this is how the book actually reads.
Scroll →
Want to see more before you buy? I send two emails a year.
built to be held, not scrolled.
Printed on plush uncoated stock on a Heidelberg offset press, because a photograph made on film deserves ink on paper. It opens flat. It gets fingerprints. That's the point.
- Pages
- 248
- Photographs
- Shot 2007–2021 on film
- Cities
- Havana · Nashville · New York · Atlanta · Philadelphia · Detroit
- Foreword
- stic of dead prez
- Press
- Heidelberg offset, uncoated
- Collections
- Mint Museum · City of Atlanta
it has already been read this way.
It's a big-hearted book.
Bill Shapiro
Former editor-in-chief, LIFE
Western history does not celebrate the magic of Black moments, the beauty of the normal. Ken West's astute snapshots of daily life are changing that.
Jen Sudul Edwards, PhD
Chief curator, The Mint Museum
This book celebrates the hard, the beautiful, and the brilliant in us; it is a love letter to Black people.
Jonell Logan
Executive director, League of Creative Interventionists
This collection captures the beauty of Black humanity, which is as unacknowledged as it is undeniable.
Translation
Jay-Z and Steve Stoute
At once emotional, revelatory and sanguine. I will use a host of these images in my film classes.
Booker T. Mattison
Filmmaker, author, professor
Exhibited at the Consulate General of France in Atlanta. Held in the permanent collections of the Mint Museum and the City of Atlanta.
Exhibition and collection history
2019 – present
the third printing ships august 14.
Order now and your copy goes out on the fourteenth. Signed copies are limited to what I can sign by hand before the boxes close.
Pay now, or pay later in four with Klarna, Affirm or Afterpay.
Collector edition — signed and numbered, from the hand-signed part of the run. Print + book — one signed archival pigment print from the series, paired with the book.
Not ready to order? Get the one email that goes out when the signed run is gone, and nothing else.
Two printings sold through. This is the third, and it is the last one at this price. Signed copies come out of the same run — once they're spoken for, the rest ship unsigned.
some of these are meant to hang.
A small number of images from the book are released as signed archival prints, in editions. The next release opens in the fall.
for the shelves that keep things.
A book about what the archive discarded belongs in the archive. Institutional and bulk orders are handled directly.
Libraries
Catalog record, ISBN and invoicing available. Standard institutional discount on orders of ten or more.
Museums & shops
Wholesale terms for museum stores and independent booksellers. Held in the permanent collections of the Mint Museum and the City of Atlanta.
Schools & programs
Classroom sets with an educator guide. Used in film and visual culture courses.
Corporate & gifting
Bulk gifting for employee resource groups and cultural programs, with optional signing and a custom bookplate.