Haunting black-and-white photo book blurs the boundaries between nightmares and reality

In her debut monograph Vanishing, published by Charcoal Press, Anna Arendt crafts a world that drifts between history and dream, where beauty and brutality intertwine. Shot over fifteen years between Germany and Poland, the book is steeped in ancestral memory, shaped by a past that lingers in the shadows.

Born in the German Democratic Republic, Arendt’s personal history is inextricably linked to the weight of war. Her parents, children of the 1940s, carried the echoes of a conflict that defined their generation. Both of her grandfathers were sent to Poland as soldiers. One returned years after the war had ended; the other never came back. These histories, though distant, ripple through Vanishing, surfacing in images that feel both deeply personal and collectively haunting.

Rendered entirely in black and white, the photographs evoke an eerie, almost spectral quality. Arendt employs double exposures and deliberate camera movement, pulling the viewer into a liminal space where past and present dissolve. A figure drifts through the forest, naked and vulnerable, wolves circling at the edges. A wall of family portraits gives way to the cold finality of gravestones. Throughout, there is a tension between life and death, connection and loss, the known and the unknowable.

Is this memory, dream, or nightmare? Vanishing never offers a definitive answer. Instead, it invites the viewer to navigate the shifting terrain of recollection, where time folds in on itself and history remains just beneath the surface. The title itself is open-ended; what is vanishing? The people? The landscape? A way of life?

Bleak yet intimate, Vanishing is a work of quiet devastation. In its pages, moments of tenderness and humanity are set against the stark realities of the past. It is a book that lingers, unsettling yet unforgettable.

Published by Charcoal Press, Vanishing by Anna Arendt will be released on May 1, 2025, in a beautifully crafted hardcover edition priced at $55 / £45. Charcoal Press' previous release, Sealskin, was an exceptional production, one that I featured in my Best Books of 2024 article, and I have high hopes that Vanishing will follow suit.

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