PICTURE THIS is coming Fall of 2025.
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Introduction by National Book Award Winner, Sigrid Nunez
Looking at the photographs in Picture This gives me the same kind of pleasure I get from one of my favorite activities: people watching. Curiosity about people is central to Draper Shreeve’s work, which piques my own curiosity. I study the warmly lit, expressive faces of Charles and Geoffrey, and though I don’t know them, I see them as a couple, two amiable elderly men of the sort I believe I’d enjoy meeting and in whose company I’d feel comfortable. But what’s up with the waiflike youngster seated, as if for protection, in the giant bronze lap of Hans Christian Andersen? And how to read the expression of the girl in “Autumn”? Is she squinting at something through a sunny window? Sassing some unseen parent?
The photographs are, first of all, beautiful, delighting the eye with their vibrant colors and skillful composition. But another element to delight is the artist’s wit, for example in “Lisbon Toe,” with its gigantic sculpted foot pointing to a scattering of insect-sized humans on the piazza below.
Several photographs include images of costumes and masks, or capture people at theatrical moments: a child in Delhi walking a tightrope; a circus acrobat in San Juan dangling upside down, her cascade of red hair harmonizing with her red aerial sash. And how happy I was to find a photo of a performer whom I used to watch regularly in Washington Square Park, miraculously transformed into a human statue on the side of the Arch.
Many fiction writers like to use photographs as prompts, either for their own writing or for assignments in classes they teach. A single image could spark an idea for a promising story. Picture This is full of potentially inspiring prompts. But of course these photos are already stories in themselves, the kind I most want to read and write myself: stories about ordinary people in places all over the world, told with wonder, compassion, and affectionate humor.
The photographs are, first of all, beautiful, delighting the eye with their vibrant colors and skillful composition. But another element to delight is the artist’s wit, for example in “Lisbon Toe,” with its gigantic sculpted foot pointing to a scattering of insect-sized humans on the piazza below.
Several photographs include images of costumes and masks, or capture people at theatrical moments: a child in Delhi walking a tightrope; a circus acrobat in San Juan dangling upside down, her cascade of red hair harmonizing with her red aerial sash. And how happy I was to find a photo of a performer whom I used to watch regularly in Washington Square Park, miraculously transformed into a human statue on the side of the Arch.
Many fiction writers like to use photographs as prompts, either for their own writing or for assignments in classes they teach. A single image could spark an idea for a promising story. Picture This is full of potentially inspiring prompts. But of course these photos are already stories in themselves, the kind I most want to read and write myself: stories about ordinary people in places all over the world, told with wonder, compassion, and affectionate humor.
Sigrid Nunez
New York City
2025
New York City
2025