On March 20, 2018, Patti Smith posted the first photo to her Instagram account.
She had started @Thisispattismith at the request of Jesse, her daughter.
“I thought the platform would suit me, since I write and take photos every day,” explains the American singer-songwriter in the prologue to her new book.
Today his account exceeds one million followers.
And she has liked the Instagram format so much that she has published
The Book of Days
, with 366 entries, dated from January 1 to December 31.
Like an Instagram posted on a page that covers any leap year.
Very short texts that accompany photos taken with your mobile,
Polaroids
you did in the past or to photos from your personal archive.
The new and old myths of him pass through there: Martin Luther King Jr., Joan Báez or Greta Thunberg.
Literary obsessions like Borges or Murakami pass by.
They pass books from her collection.
She and her dead pass by: her husband, Fred;
her mother, and her brother Todd.
And she and hers pass by alive from her: hers her children, Jackson and Jesse;
her inseparable squire, Lenny Kaye;
her cat, Cairo... The list is long and that's the point.
It's like an Advent calendar that lasts 12 months.
Patti Smith's style is about being very personal and universal.
Why would she change herself now?
A photo of her hand was the first thing she posted on Instagram, in March 2018.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Editorial Lumen)
The first entry in the book, from January 1st.
"A new year unfolds, the unknown before us," says the text.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Editorial Lumen)
"Jesse with flowers in the snow", says only this entry in which Smith's youngest daughter appears.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Editorial Lumen)
This portrait of a snowman in Washington Square, Manhattan, is dated February 17.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Lumen Publishing)
Seagulls on Rockaway Beach, the Queens beach to which his fellow generation Ramones dedicated a song.
Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Editorial Lumen)
The author's bed in her Rockaway Beach home.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Lumen Publishing)
"Black coat with scarf", that is the brief explanation of this entry from April 2.Patti Smith (The book of days / Editorial Lumen)
"I give thanks for seemingly small things, like my glasses, without which I couldn't read," he writes on May 4.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Editorial Lumen)
“My old Italian cowboy boots,” Smith writes.
The soles are worn, but that's no reason to throw them away.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Editorial Lumen)
“My brother's Navy flag.
Bound by him, she will always remain so in his memory.
Todd Smith died in the mid-nineties.Patti Smith (The Book of Days / Lumen Publishing)
"Limenitis arthemis astyanax is dying in Midland (Kentucky)", the entry of July 8.Patti Smith (The book of days / Editorial Lumen)
This photograph closes the book with one of those stories so beautiful that they seem invented: "On my birthday my mother always called me at 6:01 and left me this message: 'Wake up, Patricia, you were born."Patti Smith (The book of the days / Editorial Lumen)
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