The 7 Best Photography Books of 2024

I first met Maya Meissner in 2019 during the judging period at the Chicago Filter Photography Festival. It turned out to be anything but a typical meeting. Meissner told me a story and planned to create a book that told the story in every imaginable photographic medium, such as a visual diary. A very personal and ominous visual diary.

Meissner tells a dark story about her and her family’s narrow escape from a serial killer in the late 1990s –yosemite killer. I was hooked. I can’t wait for this true crime scrapbook to come to life. This year, she released a stunning and intimate collection, which she titled Cedar Inn.

What’s the best part of this book? it is only photos, and then insert a short text at the end with everything you need to know about Meissner’s historical events. The photography and design are so eerie that anyone will know this isn’t your ordinary photo collection – this is definitely a documentary about the personal and sinister.

In 1999, Cary Stayner, a handyman at the Cedar Lodge, murdered a woman and two children at the motel near Yosemite National Park (authorities later found another female victim) . Months before the horrific crime, Maya, her parents and sister were guests at the Cedar Inn when a man tried to break into their hotel room in the middle of the night. Her father yelled at the intruder, scaring him away.

Meissner and her sister knew nothing about this almost fateful night until her mother finally revealed the family secret to her in 2014. Articles and archival footage shot in . She also took original photos of the current Yosemite landscape, the eerie forest surrounding the crime scene.

More than a decade later, Meisner’s Cedar Inn Serving as a visual summary of the work, its imagery and design were carefully considered to remain sensitive to the victims and their surviving families.

Meissner’s dedication at the beginning of the book speaks to all of them: “Thank you to my mom for sharing her demons with me and for being brave enough for me to share them with the world. Thank you to my dad for being our for my sister and for being there for me through it all, and most importantly, for Carol, Julie, Silvina, and Joy. ——Anna Goldwater Alexander