Adrianna Ault

‘Levee’

by Adrianna Ault, published by Void.

€45.00

“Amongst the unstoppable changing world, the chaos, the growth, the loss, the laughter, and tears there came to a point where I couldn't breathe. I felt as though I was drowning. I went out to the levee on the Mississippi River by my mother's house and walked with my camera.”

Adrianna Ault

Levee

Adrianna Ault was raised in New Orleans where a 350 mile levee system controls and holds back flood waters. This project began as Ault attempted to better understand the landscape surrounding the city, but evolved over the course of 5-years to encompass her changing family, journeys they took and the processing of grief. The levee became a metaphor for the barriers built in an attempt to ward off inevitable decline, and the onslaught of time and nature.

“I discovered how the surrounding city's waterways exposed the land to a constant state of vulnerability. The physical landscape is parallel to an emotional landscape rooted within the culture of New Orleans and its people.”

“Making pictures in this place was not outside of the pain of losing my mother or the joy and wild ride of being one, rather it was beyond it. It is a quiet place to rest and feel the heart-sinking loss and what is found along the way.”

Adrianna Ault

Ault began photographing in 2017 and the final images in this new book were made in 2022. Alongside photographs of the landscape of New Orleans and the Hudson Valley, she photographed her children, and her mother’s final car journey from Rhinebeck, NY to her mother’s home in New Orleans, LA. The act of making photographs allowed Ault to see and process the world in a different way, with a quietness and slowness—and in this she found sanctuary.

Levee

21 x 28 cm
112 pages
750 copies
Open Spine Hardcover
Text by George Weld

ISBN 978-618-5479-29-9

Adrianna Ault

Adrianna Ault (b.1972) is an American photographer raised in New Orleans, LA. Her practice is deeply motivated by a desire to explore change within grief, time, and the abstraction of memory. 'Levee', published by Void, is her debut monograph. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley of New York.

Featured in

  • ✳︎ Selected for the ‘Rebirth’ Exhibition at Liquida Festival, Turin 2024

    ✳︎ Selected for the ‘Southern Spirit’ Exhibition at Strata Editions, Livingston 2024

    The Best Photobooks of 2023 – Gabriela Cendoya

    Photobookstore Best Books of 2023 – Clint Woodside

    20 Recommended Photobooks of 2023 – Photo Art Books

  • ENGLAND, Picnic

    GERMANY, Fotobus Library

    GREECE, National Library of Greece

    GREECE, Void

    IRELAND, The Library Project

    LATVIA, ISSP

    ROMANIA, Photo Romania Festival at Grain Lab

    SPAIN, Library of Museo San Telmo

    USA, Center for Photography at Woodstock

    USA, MoMA Library

    USA, School of Visual Arts

    USA, University of Iowa Libraries

  • Photograph: Adrianna Ault
    Text: George Weld
    Edit, Design: João Linneu, Myrto Steirou

    Printing: Jelgavas tipogrāfija
    Binding: Jelgavas tipogrāfija

    Language: English

    Font: Alfphabet III by OSP

    Adrianna Ault © for the photographs
    George Weld © for the text
    Void © for this edition

More about