To and From by Reed Mattison.

How does one feel the distance between homes? Better yet, how can one describe that ambiguous in-between? That longing. A peculiar mix of feelings churned within, a complex blend of emotions swirling around our origins, our present circumstances, and our uncertain future.

To and From by Reed Mattison is a book about the uncanny distance that disturbs anyone who lives away from where they were born and raised. Throughout To and From, Reed seems to measure this distance vis-à-vis the camera. We are gauging ourselves against the land, friends and family, memories, and whatever emotions surface between these encounters.

We enter Mattison’s world via an interior image picturing a painting of a mountain vista, hanging on a wood-panelled wall, followed by a photo of a single set of train tracks curving away from us into the brilliant filtered sunlight of the forest canopy we are under before we are met with a blank sheet of tan paper separating these two photos from the books interior.

If these two photographs are our establishing shots, then the two photographs at the end of the book are our closing credits. Separated by another blank tan sheet of paper, we see a loving photo of a family picnic beneath a magnificent tree in a rural setting, followed by a trail curving away in the forest under a similar, but more docile, filtered sunlight to the train tracks at the beginning of the book.

This bookending of the interior sequence of images holds a great weight in that aforementioned in-between space, the distance between here and there, that felt, but often indescribable feeling one has for a home away from home.

Passing through the book's interior, we encounter rural landscapes, people, and domestic spaces, starting from an apprehensive distance and growing closer and more intimate as we progress through the sequence.

The sequence opens with a pair of hands holding a morel mushroom, followed by a dedication that reads, “For Clay, with whom I will always be at home,” which charges the mind to search for Clay in the proceeding portraits, with Clay potentially being the figure pictured in a white jacket from behind astride in mid-step who reappears towards the end of the book as the only formal portrait in To and From.

In fact, many of the people we meet in To and From are seen from behind, through foliage, at a distance, or, in one case, across a full-bleed spread, out of focus in the right-hand corner of the image.

There is nothing cold about the photographs and their distances; quite the opposite, they ache and tremble with a love that dares not get too close. The photos are as much about the people as they are of the land these people encompass. Reed’s images feel like wide-open hugs, arms stretching themselves around every detail, sensation, and feeling, requiring the photographer to step back to take it all in.

This said, we also encounter landscapes that block our outstretched arms: dense forests, windows, and fences. There are things here that complicate our experience of existing in this space—subtle disturbances to our notions of home.

Kentucky’s rural candour spills through Reed’s photographs, and the ebb and flow of domestic life punctuates the lyrical rhythm of the book’s gentle visual prose. Nothing here shouts at us; instead, a forlorn yet positive affirmation speaks softly throughout the book with each turn of the page.

Where there is love, there is a home to come back to, and there is much to love, and that is loved in To and From.

One of my favourite moments in the book seems to be a sort of baptism at the local fishing spot, where we see a couple: the man’s right hand rests on the woman’s shoulder while his left points out towards the lake. Next page, we’re fishing, our feet in the lake, holding a bent rod, and dragging a line with a potential catch. Then we turn the page again and see the man and woman at the same distance, embracing.

There is a shared faith that permeates the people and the land they inhabit. A togetherness that is felt. Community means something here—a consciousness of the relationships people share and the land that nourishes them. There is much to be revered, but also questioned.

Through the book’s aesthetic form and design, these feelings of emotional distances, admiration, and complications are established in varying ways from the book’s handmade construction by Eugenia Koval, which evokes in the hands something tender and fragile, especially with a photograph and quote by Wendel Berry printed on what feels like rolling paper with its thin frailness and tobacco colour towards the end of the book.

The book’s feel and construction evoke the personal and the intimate, and the layout and design by Matilde Vittoria Laricchia allow the photographs to communicate with each other in different ways depending on their placement on the page.

Placing most of the images in the bottom third of the page is a pleasant break from the traditional centred or top-third treatment most books use. It could be seen as a looking back by the photographer, as being lost in deep thought, and as emphasizing the distance between being present and being in reverie.

Full-bleed spreads here feel like impenetrable scenes, regardless of depth or density; they feel impossible to enter, like the memory on the other side of a windowpane in a daydream. Using space throughout the layout of the book’s sequence channels a sense of constantly observing, always moving, and feeling slightly untethered as we pair images, place them left or right, up or down, or across the gutter.

Some simple yet strong organizing principles help glue everything together and add to the narrative's gentle flow. The edit by Ilias Georgiadis is cohesive, and the mix of image types and orientations keeps the book intriguing as one navigates its pages.

To and From is Reed Mattison’s debut monograph and my first book from Origini Edizioni. I believe this was a fantastic pairing for the artist’s first book by this publisher. Without that intimate, handmade touch, I’m not sure it would have had the same impact Reed probably wanted to extract from this work.

I am happy to have Reed’s work in my collection and to be introduced to Origini Edizioni through this beautiful publication of images that speak profoundly to me and to my relationship with my hometown through photography.

When language cannot get at the heart of what we are feeling, the embodied nature of photography can sometimes be the best translator of those ambiguous distances that lie between those emotions.

Photography can become felt and become a backdrop for our continuous failures to reach the ineffable, and for that reason, To and From by Reed Mattison is inexhaustibly beautiful.