One Star and a Dark Voyage

In her first monograph with TIS books, the much-heralded photographer Barbara Bosworth has interwoven the visceral and ethereal to visually build a sense of the delicate and fragile nature of life, at a place where the edges of heaven and earth blur.

These pictures, made with Bosworth’s customary 8x10 camera, speak to our connections with nature: bear paws hauntingly human, roses cut to bring beauty indoors, names carved into a tree trunk declaring one’s love forever.

In One Star and a Dark Voyage, we are brought into intimate communion with such things as a wound on a sun-freckled shin, a worm as stigmata in a child’s hand, a bird lying in a cupped hand, a body hovering in the darkness, the spot where an elk slept – all evoking the ephemeral nature of life.

“This work began as a way for me to think about life and death and about our ties with nature and our utter dependence on earth, and later, after the death of a loved one, blurred into images about the exquisite fragility of life, about loss and longing,” as Bosworth explains. “I began looking for light in the darkness. Fireflies as I try to hold onto the light. The simple beauty of light falling on leaves. A rainbow, the sunset, the Milky Way.” 

The result: a book as journey, where weight becomes light. The beautiful and the terrible, all interconnected, all the same. Always seeking home.