Vanessa Winship , Snow, 2022

“As I drive out of town, the wind picks up, lashing the powdery snow from the bushes until it swirls on the asphalt of the road. I know what I’m looking for, but I notice the sign a moment late. The surface is treacherous. I let the car slow to a crawl before hitting the brakes.”

After achieving notoriety with her intimate portraits, Vanessa Wisnhip in Snow experiences a new physical distance between herself and her subjects, revealing to us how often what is not fully understood is far more compelling than what is clear and defined. Perhaps this is a truism, but it is one that rejuvenates and breathes with each new detail of the author’s tale.

This sense of estrangement also echoes in the narrative piece by poet and novelist Jem Poster, which is intertwined with Snow’s photographs. She tells of a portrait photographer and her recalcitrant subject. The photographer is not Winship, the subject is not someone she portrays. Poster’s is fiction, another fascinating layer of this complex book that exposes the slipperiness inherent in any narrative and destabilizes superficial readings.