A Book of Days

A Book of Days by Patti Smith is a year-long visual diary — 365 photographs, one for each day — accompanied by Smith’s characteristic meditations on art, memory, loss, and the extraordinary in the everyday. Drawn from her Instagram archive, the images range across objects, books, artworks, animals, and people: the accumulated visual vocabulary of a life spent paying attention. Smith’s captions are intimate and exact, offering a window into her daily practice and her ongoing conversations with the artists, writers, and musicians she has loved throughout her life. Published by Bloomsbury, this is a book to be revisited — opened at random, read slowly, returned to across the seasons. For admirers of Smith’s writing and visual work, it is an essential companion. For newcomers, it is a perfect introduction to one of the most genuine and compelling artistic voices of our time.