On my Bookshelf | Alessandra Sanguinetti – Some Say Ice

On my Bookshelf

In this column, I occasionally present a photo book that is close to my heart. It is not – or not necessarily – a new publication. It is simply a book that somehow fell into my hands and that I would like to recommend to others. And yes – of course it’s on my bookshelf.

It’s a bit of a continuation of my Photo book of the month column – just not necessarily as regular as before. And I’ve generally made the column a bit shorter and tighter. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Prologue

Today, I’m going to introduce you to a book by a wonderful photographer, which has been on my reading list for a few months now. And I really struggled to decide which book to choose. In the end, I opted for her latest book – ‘Some Say Ice’ – even though it’s probably not my favourite of hers. But more on that later. Oh, and before I forget, this photographer is Alessandra Sanguinetti.

About the Photographer | Alessandra Sanguinetti

Sanguinetti was born in New York in 1968, but grew up in Argentina, where she also lived from 1970 to 2003. She became interested in photography at a very early age, at the tender age of 9. An important catalyst for this was her mother’s book collection, which she regularly browsed through. There she found works by Michael Lesy and Dorothea Lange, among others.

Sanguinetti later studied anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires and General Studies at the International Centre of Photography in New York.

In 1996, she began work on her first sensational series entitled ‘On the Sixth Day’. This work deals with the complex relationship between humans and domesticated animals in rural Argentina.

A few years later, she turned her photographic attention to two nine-year-old cousins, Belinda and Guille, whose grandmother owned the farm that was the subject of ‘Sixth Day’. Sanguinetti accompanied the two girls for five years, taking photographs and embarking on a lifelong project in which she photographed the two girls as they grew up and now as adult women. 

The first five years culminated in a highly acclaimed monograph entitled ‘The Adventures of Belinda and Guille and the Meaning of their Enigmatic Dreams’ (2010). The second book in this series differs only in its subtitle, ‘… and The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer’, and was published in 2020.

Sanguinetti is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and recipient of a Hasselblad Foundation grant. Her photographs are included in numerous public and private collections, and she has been a member of Magnum since 2007. She currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.

About the Photo Book | Some Say Ice

The background

As I briefly mentioned at the beginning, I chose Sanguinetti’s latest book for this review. The reason for this is not only because it is new, but also because of the story behind its creation. This story is – at least in my eyes – as interesting as it is obscure. And somehow also a little creepy.

Alessandra Sanguinetti’s motivation and inspiration for this project stems from the also aforementioned rummaging through her mother’s bookshelf as a nine-year-old. One of the books she discovered there, and which obviously had a profound effect on her, was Michael Lesy’s ‘Wisconsin Death Trip’. 

This book, which I had never heard of before, deals more or less documentarily with the rather bizarre and sometimes quite creepy events that took place between 1885 and 1900 in Jackson County, Wisconsin. More precisely, it focuses on the small town of Black River Falls. As I learned on Wikipedia, the background is as follows: ‘In addition to a disintegration of the local economy after the closure of several industrial mines, the populace is plagued by a diphtheria epidemic that claims the lives of numerous children, as well as a series of violent crimes, murders, suicides, arsons, religious delusions, mental illness, and superstitions.’

Michael Lesy takes up these stories in his book, accompanied by contemporary newspaper clippings and numerous photographs by Charles Van Schaick.

The project

From 2014 onwards, Sanguinetti made repeated photographic trips to Black River Falls in Wisconsin and its surroundings, working on this project for a total of eight years. Alesandra Sanguinetti apparently picks up on themes and narratives from Lesy’s book and Van Schlaick’s photographs – but as I am not familiar with the book, I have only read about this elsewhere and cannot verify it. You probably don’t really need to have read the book, but it makes sense to be familiar with this basic background. Only then can you gain a deeper understanding of Sanguinetti’s work here.

Above all, however, it may be useful to take a closer look at Van Schlaick’s pictures from Black River Falls in order to better understand all this. Fortunately, the Wisconsin History Society has a link here to an impressive collection of thousands of these images.

But now, finally, to the project and the book. Alessandra Sanguinetti is not simply or obviously following in the footsteps of the past or even Van Schlaick’s images. She may still have Wisconsin Death Trip vaguely in her mind – or at least what she associated with it as a child. However, she has photographed her very own view and her personal discovery of Black River Falls. And that is more than just exciting…

‘Some Say Ice’ was published by MACK in 2022 and comprises 70 images on 148 pages in a hardcover edition with an insert print on the back cover. A second print of the first edition from 2024 is currently still available new.

What I like about it

The thought-provoking concept

First and foremost: its complexity, combined with simplicity and a good dose of mystery. Need I say more? 😉

No, seriously. When I bought the book this spring and flipped through it for the first time, I was a little confused. Yes, I liked some of the pictures right away, but I didn’t understand the title or the overall concept. Not at all…

Some Say Ice is a book that demands your full attention. And I don’t mean in terms of research, although that’s not a bad idea and very easy to do – there are lots of articles about it online. I really mean the book and its pictures themselves. It’s a good book for a cold and grey November day, so it’s perfect for this time of year – in many ways.

You should take your time with both the individual images – there are countless details to discover – and the work as a whole. It’s really incredibly fun to try to put yourself in the photographer’s shoes and imagine her thoughts about the images. To puzzle over what she might have been thinking here and there – and whether she was thinking at all. Perhaps she was often guided ‘only’ by feelings or memories – or her instincts.

Incidentally, you will have no choice but to explore the work yourself. Alessandra Sanguinetti does not actually explain anything in the book. Apart from a list of acknowledgements, there is only a very short text explaining the relationship to ‘Wisconsin Death Trip’ and its significance for Sanguinetti’s career as a photographer.

Dread and wonder became one.

Alessandra Sanguinetti

That’s enough! And that’s a good thing!

Once you understand that, the book draws you in. At least, that was the case for me. As I slowly look at each picture, I think about how it fits into the context and what relationship it might have to the others.

The mysterious title

Oh yes, and let’s come back to the quote, the meaning of which I would not have understood without doing some research – I think it was an interview with Alessandra Sanguinetti. It goes back to the following poem:

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Robert Frost

One more thing

Oh, there are actually three more things. I can also highly recommend the books mentioned above in the photographer’s introduction. They are very different from ‘Some Say Ice’, and not just because they are in colour…

And to resolve my hint from above: My favourite – not in terms of concept, but in terms of photos – is probably: ‘On the Sixth Day’. 😉