Damiani presents Disquiet, featuring photographs by Amani Willett and an essay by Marvin Heiferman. Willett’s first monograph explores the anxieties of starting a family in a time of uncertainty and social unrest in America.
Disquiet, a metaphoric journey that examines the first two years in the life of the photographer’s son, weaves intimate family pictures with images of political and economic turbulence in American society between 2010 and 2012. Relying on a comprehensive visual approach, including environmental portraiture, landscapes, still lifes and news images, Disquiet creates a multi-layered story of beauty, tenderness and unease. The cinematic images form a narrative arc in which the photographer’s sense of anxiety is palpable.
Through the mix of imagery and the thoughtful design, sequencing and pacing, Disquiet moves beyond a simple visual record to poignantly reconstruct the mood of the period depicted. The resulting book is a fresh and distinctive approach to storytelling—one in which the themes of family, life, death, and external forces come to the foreground, recede, then cycle back again.
The book brings the viewer on a journey that seamlessly shifts from public to private spaces––in one spread, the clouds of tear-gas smoke from a Occupy Wall Street demonstration fill the frame; and a few pages later, we see a spread of the photographer’s pregnant wife staring out the window tentatively. Disquiet is a striking visual interpretation of one person’s experience that is sure to resonate with the experiences of many.
Amani Willett is a Brooklyn-based photographer. In 2012 he received his MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts where he received the Alice Beck Odette scholarship and was named commencement speaker. He holds a BA in American Studies from Wesleyan University. Willett’s work has been featured in the books Street Photography Now (Thames and Hudson) and New York: In Color (Abrams) and in publications Newsweek, American Photography and The New York Times. He is a long-term member of the iN-PUBLiC collective of photographers. His pictures have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York and the Center for Urban Photography, Stockholm, Sweden.
Disquiet
Photographs by Amani Willett
7 1/4 x 10 inches
128 pages
60 color illustrations
Hardbound
ISBN: 978-88-6208-274-7
$40.00
