From meditative portraits that nod at the Dutch old masters to an incendiary, epic exploration ofthe Troubles,these are the volumes that resonated this year

1. Best culture 2021
Pandemic park life and a secret knitting cult: the best
photography books of 2021
From meditative portraits that nod at the Dutch old masters to
an incendiary, epic exploration of the Troubles, these are the
volumes that resonated this year
More on the best culture of 2021
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2. Sean O’Hagan
Wed 22 Dec 2021 15.00 GMT
T
he photography book that I returned to more than any other this year was
Encampment Wyoming by Lora Webb Nichols, an extraordinary record of life in a US
frontier community in the early 20th century. Comprised of photographs by Nichols
and other local amateur photographers, it emanates a powerful sense of place.
Domestic interiors and still lifes punctuate the portraits, which range from the spectral – a
blurred and ghostly adult plaiting the hair of a young girl – to the stylish – a dapper, besuited
woman peering through a window. An intimate, quietly compelling portrait of a time, a place
and a nascent community.

3. Lizzie Nichols at Willow Glen 1899 Encampment, Wyoming Photograph: Lora Webb Nichols/Fw:Books
Perhaps because of the strangely suspended nature of our times, I was also
drawn to contemporary books that dealt in quiet reflection. Donavon Smallwood’s Languor was
created during the lockdown spring and summer of 2020, as he wandered through the woods in
the relatively secluded north-west corner of New York’s Central Park. Smallwood’s images of
glades, streams and ravines suggest stillness amid the clamour of the city and are punctuated by
his deftly composed portraits of the individuals who were regularly drawn there during the
pandemic. The book’s subtext deals with the fraught history of Central Park, a space that has
often echoed the city’s racial tensions. “What’s it like to be a black person in nature?” asks
Smallwood in this quietly powerful debut.