Musician and writer Patti Smith isn’t exactly the first person you’d expect to see on Instagram. The 75-year-old likes to write in her notebook, has photographed with a Polaroid camera for years and loves books. But at some point the Polaroid broke. And her daughter convinced Smith that Instagram can actually be a good thing, too.
In 2018, Smith began posting images and text to the platform. More than a million people now follow her profile. In poetic and laconic words, she describes her everyday life there, shows pictures of her travels, books, companions. She has now transferred this principle to the “Book of Days”, recently published by Kiepenheuer
insight into her life
The book includes 365 images from her archive, one per day. Some of them have already been published on Instagram, some have not. Smith provides a photo and brief text on each page, providing a glimpse into her life. She shows objects from her house that are associated with special memories. For example an old mug from her father or a guitar from her late husband Fred Sonic Smith.
We see: A life dedicated to art. The “Book of Days” is also an invitation to engage with the artists who mean a lot to Smith. Arthur Rimbaud for example, Jimi Hendrix, Sylvia Plath or Georgia O’Keeffe. We see memorabilia from them and many others. Smith also frequently visits the graves of loved ones.
Remembering Robert Mapplethorpe
On February 4, a black-and-white photograph of a snowy New York City newspaper store is seen, reminding Smith of her friend, the late photographer Mapplethorpe. “Robert Mapplethorpe bought me my first Chocolate Egg Cream there in August 1967,” it says.
Smith writes in a foreword that the “Book of Days” feeds on her Instagram account, but stands on her own. Much of it was created during the pandemic when she was sitting alone in her room. For her, it was a “grateful offer to find courage even in the darkest of times.”
Patti Smith, Book of Days, translated by Brigitte Jakobeit, Kiepenheuer
