This lavish book marks the 40th anniversary of Barthes' renowned work Camera Lucidain 2020. Artist Odette England invited 199 of the world's best-known contemporary photographers, writers, critics, curators and art historians to contribute an image or text that reflects on Barthes' unpublished snapshot of his mother, aged five. This snapshot is known as the winter garden photograph. Barthes discusses it at length in Camera Lucida, but never reproduces it. It is one of the most famous unseen photographs in the world.
Keeper of the Hearth features more than 200 images, supported by four essays. Essayists include Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art; Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, photographer, writer, and editor; Phillip Prodger, Senior Research Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art; and Douglas Nickel, Andrea V. Rosenthal Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University.
