Dimitri Staszewski will be officially launching his first photobook Close to the Bayou at the Thomas Mann Gallery and Studio.

The exhibition will feature prints from the project alongside the book itself.

Close to the Bayou is a journey of artmaking in the face of death and explores what is passed on through that process. The photobook creates a documentation of the emotional space the artist, Dimitri Staszewski, and Thomas Mann, an uncle figure and artistic mentor share as Mann goes through treatment for prostate cancer during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. During that unprecedented period of isolation, Mann, a renowned jewelry and sculpture artist, continued producing work at a frenetic pace.

As Staszewski came close to finishing this project, he was diagnosed with cancer himself, which required surgery and chemotherapy to treat. He had to reconsider if the project was finished and eventually decided to rework the book as he was forced to apply the metaphor he had been building to his own experience.

The presentation of Close to the Bayou in Mann’s gallery will add a new layer of meaning to the work itself as Staszewski and Mann continue to create and present work in the aftermath of their successful cancer treatments.