A book-length essay about photography’s unique ability to ease the ache of human mortality.

Drawing on the writings of Wallace Stevens, Marilynne Robinson and other poets, artists, musicians and thinkers, Brooklyn-based photographer Tim Carpenter (born 1968) argues passionately—in one main essay and a series of lively digressions—that photography is unique among the arts in its capacity for easing the fundamental ache of our mortality; for managing the breach that separates the self from all that is not the self; for enriching one’s sense of freedom and personhood; and for cultivating meaning in an otherwise meaningless reality. Paperback, 288 pages.