In 1991, the photographer Liz Johnson Artur—whose career spans over three decades and includes shooting Amy Winehouse, Mos Def, Eminem, the Spice Girls, and many more—moved to London and started making scrapbooks. The acclaimed visual artist describes them as “workbooks and handmade volumes” that combine fabric, wood, even glass, with photographic imagery, text, and color. In fact, each is a breathtaking artwork, full of life. Now, they’re getting a rightful spotlight, inside the pages of the new book I Will Keep You in Good Company, published by MACK.
“These books, from the beginning, were based on intuition,” Artur, who is Russian-Ghanian and was born in Bulgaria, says. “They allowed me to work with photographs and words; they helped me to engage with photographs in a physical way. I never looked at these books as diaries. They were mainly holding ideas and stories that I tried to retell through photographs.”
Artur’s abstract and whimsical yet cohesive body of work tells an honest story of the Black and African diaspora, eschewing old tropes in favor of stirring imagery the artist pasted onto a receipt or bill. That story is one Artur herself knows well: “Before I came to London, I was trying to write down my thoughts and ideas, but coming to London, I had to change language,” she says of her move from Bulgaria to the U.K. “I didn’t feel that my English at the time was good enough to use writing, and the stimulation that I got from my new surroundings made me want to use photography as a way of preserving.”
While putting together I Will Keep You in Good Company, Artur dove back into her archives, revisiting workbooks she hadn’t seen in 10 or more years. “It was an interesting process of rediscovering stories, but also seeing the connection between how I started and where I am now,” she says. “I wanted the book to represent this journey.”
Below, scroll through a preview of Artur’s book:
Source: W Magazine
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