A collection of works by London-based Ghanaian-Russian photographer Liz Johnson Artur.
This book brings together pages and fragments from over twenty workbooks the artist has been making by hand since the early 1990s.
Through these books, which are part diary and part experimental playground, the artist has shaped a photographic language by layering, cutting, annotating, and assembling. It has also been a space for processing not only photographs, but life itself.
Each page is a tactile surface, combining photographic prints mounted on canvas, tracing paper, faxes, photo paper, screen prints, handwriting, and clipped text. The result is a sensorial and intimate archive, carefully and lovingly preserving moments lived and witnessed by friends, family, strangers, and lovers.
‘I like to be right next to it, in the middle of it, to take it home’, the artist writes. ‘To keep them close is a way of giving importance and appreciation.’ These workbooks are acts of presence—visual thinking made physical—and formed the foundation for the artist’s renowned project, Black Balloon Archive, which celebrates communities across the African diaspora. This book is a candid and generous record of the artist learning not only how to look, but how to stay close.
I Will Keep You in Good Company brings together pages and fragments from over twenty of Ghanaian-Russian artist Liz Johnson Artur’s personal workbooks – handmade volumes she has kept since the early 1990s. Part diary, part experimental playground, these books are where she shaped her photographic language through layering, cutting, annotating, and assembling: a space for processing not only images, but life itself.
Each page is a tactile surface, combining photographic prints on canvas, tracing paper, faxes, and photo stock with screen-prints, handwriting, and clipped texts. The result is a sensorial, intimate archive of moments lived and witnessed – of friends, family, strangers, lovers – held with care and attention.
‘I like to be right next to it, in the middle of it, to take it home’, Johnson Artur writes. ‘To keep them close is a way of giving importance and appreciation.’ These workbooks are acts of presence – visual thinking made physical – and the foundation for her celebrated Black Balloon Archive, a project that honours communities across the African diaspora. I Will Keep You in Good Company is a candid, generous record of a photographer learning not only how to look, but how to stay close.
