At Night Gardens Grow

In the hands of a gifted photographer, their pictures conjure a world different than our own: photographs made in and from our world speak of another world, a world that is different and that, if the intent is artful, is filled with possibilities in a way that this one, the world we inhabit, does not.

In the West, such an approach is not part of how the world is being looked at. The world is what it is — what it appears to be, and anything else beyond that is either for children, for dreamers, or for any of those other people who “do not contribute much”. That anything outside of human nature might possess a spirit of any sorts is unthinkable. There only is reality, however poorly defined it actually is, and that’s it.

The photographs in Pia Paulina Guilmoth‘s At Night Gardens Grow refuse to engage with that reality that we’re supposed to stick to. You could describe them following any of the standard avenues available in the world of photography — focusing on, say, camera equipment or on possible classifications (“documentary”). But you would not do the work any favours; and you certainly would not produce any insight worth engaging with.

Let’s be open about this: the camera equipment is not responsible for the power of Guilmoth’s photographs, and neither are the various stagings and/or arrangements employed to produce some of them. The only thing that matters is the photographer’s vision and what I read in the picturse as her desire to conjure up another world, a world that through what might come across as occasional segments of strangeness offers more than what is available now.

It is not necessarily individual photographs that have that effect (even though there are traces in some). Instead, it is their accumulation in the form of the book, which allows the various visual strands in the photographs to add up to a larger story. I want that word, story, to be understood in the widest and most generous possible fashion; in fact, I’d like the reader to consider the possibility of a story being communicated in the book, with the story only fully coming to life inside the viewer’s mind.

This is a book for dreamers, and I mean this in the most supportive and complimentary fashion.

After looking through At Night Gardens Grow for the first time, I immediately had to think of Lieko Shiga‘s Rasen Kaigan (Spiral Shore). Before and following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in the northeast of Japan’s largest island (the artist’s studio was literally swept away), Shiga created an immersive and deeply moving body of work infused with elements of traditional Japanese folk tales and beliefs.

If you have never watched Shiga speak about the work, do yourself a favour and watch this video. In the video, the artist speaks of wanting to capture the invisible spirit of the village she had found herself in. It is that spirit that dominates the book and makes it such an overwhelming experience.

And that’s the same approach used by Guilmoth in different circumstances, albeit in somewhat similar settings — somewhere in Maine in what looks like a very rural area. Whether or not the North American artist’s work looks or possibly feels more interior than the Japanese one’s is a question I cannot possibly answer, in particular given that I know the back story of the publication of At Night Gardens Grow.

That back story is no secret. “First published in 2021,” the text on the publisher’s website states, “At Night Gardens Grow disappeared within a few short months of its release. This new edition reshapes the work from within, adding unseen images, and removing others, not as a revisionist act but as continuation. Pia revisits At Night Gardens Grow five years on, having transitioned in the interim, now reflecting on her life at that time, and the drastic changes that have taken place since its release.”

Originally, I ordered a copy of the book because I learned of the second edition that was reshaping the first. I have long wondered why the world of photography treats books of photographs as if they had been set in stone once they have been published.

Occasionally, a (typically famous) photographer gets to reissue an older book with the addition of a small number of added and previously unseen pictures. But beyond that, photobooks aren’t altered much. If you think about it, this makes no sense: there are any number of reasons why a new edition of a book might be different than an earlier one. If an artist and their understanding of the world has grown (for some photographers, that might be a big if, though), then why wouldn’t their books reflect that?

Guilmoth’s certainly is a perfect reason to reshape a book that previously existed in a different form. I have not seen that older version; I missed it for any of the reasons that I miss the release of a lot of books. But I didn’t miss this new version, and I’m very glad that I did not.

Alas, At Night Gardens Grow is not without its faults, first and foremost the treatment of the horizontal photographs. While the vertical photographs are made to fill almost the entirety of the pages they are found in, the bulk of the horizontal photographs are placed right in the center of their pages with enormous amounts of white space around them. Not only are they much too small (they feel forlorn), the vastness of the white space around them forms a huge distraction.

Here’s the thing: if a photographer creates a world for the viewer to truly immerse themselves into, then the book design has to allow for that immersion to happen — instead of constantly pulling the viewer out of it. As a viewer, you will thus have to force yourself to look past this very unfortunate design decision.

Recommended.

At Night Gardens Grow; second edition; photographs by Pia Paulina Guilmoth; 112 pages; Stanley Barker; 2026

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Two seemingly conflicting things can be true at the same time. Someone can be a profoundly troubled person (possibly suffering from a whole array of mental problems) and a gifted photographer at the same time.

Photoland has adopted two strategies to deal with this situation. It either completely ignores the mental-health issues and pretends they have had no influence on the photography (Diane Arbus might be the best example). Or it stresses the mental-health issues but in a fashion that turns people whose lives would ask for our compassion into brutish caricatures: photographic savants whose life and work can be admired with the kind of thrill that the generally bored denizens of photoland would only get from, say, watching a horror movie.

As you might be able to infer from the above, I am not in favour of approaching people that way. In fact, in general I am not in favour of ignoring people’s struggles — mental or otherwise, especially not if it’s done for the celebration of an idea of art that as best is distasteful: approaching art as if its supremacy simply came with its practitioners trampling over all that marks us as human beings.

A better approach would be to acknowledge the presence of the suffering and of the art, parts of which might or might not have emerged from it — without having one side taking over.

One of the problems with that approach is that ultimately, we cannot know to what extent and/or how people suffered. We can try to read something into the photographs (or paintings, sculptures, etc.). However, as we see in the world history that is currently unfolding in front of our very eyes, reading mental conditions into people without actual professionals being able to evaluate them in person is problematic.

I would argue that there is something to be said for accepting the complication that is introduced by dealing with the troubled personality behind a set of photographs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not eager to use one as an explanation of sorts for the other (as I said this is best left to medical professionals).

Instead, it seems to me that we all live with conflicting aspects of our personalities and behaviours. Moving towards a form of acceptance in the case of artists might help us deal with our own troubles (however different they might be).

Plus, compassion is best exercised when it’s difficult — and not when it’s easy.

Just to make this very clear: as far as I’m concerned nobody is under any obligation to engage with any work. Frankly, there is so much good and wonderful art out there that not looking at, say, Picasso is not really a loss. In any case, I previously wrote about Claire Dederer’s book Monsters, which does a very good job at diving into how to possibly approach artists such as Picasso.

With all of the above said, when Raw Art on Paper by G.P. Fieret arrived in the mail, I felt some trepidation over how I might respond to it, how I might engage with it. I had heard of this artist before, and what I had heard and seen had definitely left its imprint in my mind.

If you don’t know anything about Gerard Petrus Fieret, a Dutch artist who lived from 1924 until 2009, you will pick up a few things while looking at the photographs. In fact, this particular book is the one you want to use. Of all the books I have seen, it does the best job at showcasing the work: both its overall breadth and its idiosyncrasies.

There are two main aspects that are out of the ordinary in the world of photography. First, there are what following standard (art) photographic orthodoxy you would describe as imperfections of the pictures. Those familiar with Daidō Moriyama’s 1972 写真よさようなら (typically translated as Bye-Bye Photography) will notice most of the devices used in that book as well: grainy photographs, photographs printed from what can only be described as partially ruined negatives, “bad” prints, etc.

In a nutshell, Fieret had a different idea of what a photograph might be, and he had a different idea of how a photograph might exist. The standard approach to dealing with photography done in this fashion is to ascribe it to “Outsider Art” or maybe “Art Brut” (as is done in the book’s essay).

Alternatively, you could simply say that there’s no reason why anyone should follow the conventions of art photography, which by themselves make no sense: why would you make a set of carefully printed photographs? Why pick a number — any number really — between 1 and however many you could possibly make? And why do photographs have to be printed in a precious fashion (other than to draw money out of wealthy people’s wallets)?

In addition, Fieret asserted both his authorship and possession of the photographs by either signing them very prominently somewhere on top of the picture or by stamping them with the various stamps he used throughout his life (all of them featuring the word “copyright”, some with his full studio address, some without), again on top of the picture, or a combination of both (often with multiple stamps all over the picture).

Fieret’s mind was not well, and there are plenty of stories you can find online. As I said it’s not overly fruitful trying to diagnose and/or understand from afar. In any case, the man has been dead for a while, so what’s the point?

What makes Raw Art on Paper by G.P. Fieret so interesting is that the book does an incredible job at focusing on both what the artist attempted to express with his pictures and the general time he lived in.

It’s not possible to fully see past the signatures and stamps (and if you were so inclined you could interpret them as parts of the work, a mental exercise I personally would rather not engage in); but it’s possible to have viewers see the art over the antics — as is the case here.

In other words, this new book makes you see the human being behind the photographs to the extent that this is possible with pictures (and pictures alone).

And I can’t help but feel that a viewer’s ultimate struggle to get a (if you will excuse the pun:) clear picture is the same problem Fieret faced himself when he made his pictures.

Recommended.

Raw Art on Paper by G.P. Fieret; photographs by Gerard Petrus Fieret (edited by Willem van Zoetendaal); essay by Franzesco Zanot; 220 pages; Van Zoetendaal; 2026

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