A Book of Days

With her 250 land camera, Patti Smith has chronicled her journeys in haunting Polaroid photographs since 1996. A writer's chair, a husband's saxophone, the beds of poets, the ateliers of artists. Pictures of life on and off the road, train stations, hotel interiors, obscure cafés ; a notebook always nearby. In A Book of Days, Smith appends photographs from this body of work with eclectic snapshots from her daily life, as posted on Instagram : anniversary pearls, a mother's keychain, her kids, her boots, sacred talismans, and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo.
More than a million followers have responded to Smith's unique aesthetic, her morning coffee, the books she's reading, the graves and monuments of beloved heroes, mavericks and saints. Within a calendar year, A Book of Days presents 366 miniature windows and dispatches into the world of the visionary writer, poet and performer. An inspirational map of a life devoted to art, a timeless offering, day by day, for deeply uncertain times.