The Seraphim
The Seraphim
“When childhood is immersed in nature, reality comes wrapped in myth and marked by seasons. Jesse Lenz has caught many small things, and holds them between his pages like brief flowers.”
- David Campany
“Tender, haunting, mesmerizing, and affirming. Beautifully produced with next-level, gorgeous printing”
- Raymond Meeks
”Lenz is always present and the experience captured feels that way”
- Mark Stienmetz
“A supernatural book of gazing and running, of rising and falling, of bloom and wilt, of growth and decay.”
- Igor Posner
”Alarmingly specific, with layers of ethereal, complex beauty. I look forward to seeing what happens next with each new chapter!”
- Andrea Modica
The Seraphim is the second volume of the The Seven Seals septology by photographer Jesse Lenz. Delving deeper into the vision that started with The Locusts, the reader explores a realm of childhood enchantment where nature insists upon sets of fledgling counterparts. His children experience the joys, curiosity, and vulnerability of childhood alongside other creatures that seem to either be standing vigil over them, or stalking them from the shadows. The backyard becomes a labyrinth of passages as the children experience the cycles of birth and death in the changing seasons. The Seraphim depicts a brooding landscape where nature and grace can be witnessed through the prism of small, infinitesimal lives.
Jesse Lenz (1988, Montana) is a self-taught photographer and multidisciplinary artist. He is the author of The Locusts (Charcoal Press, 2020), and he is the founder and director of Charcoal Book Club and the Chico Review. As an illustrator he has created images for publications including TIME, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many others. From 2011-2018 he also co-founded and published The Collective Quarterly and The Coyote Journal. He lives on a farm in rural Ohio.
Embossed linen with tip-in image
9.75 x 12.25
144 pages
978-1-7362345-3-2
Slipcase Edition Available
Special Edition with Silver Gelatin Print Available
In the press:
The Atlantic
Harper’s (print)
Photo-eye
What People are Saying:
“When childhood is immersed in nature, reality comes wrapped in myth and marked by seasons. This summer. Those winters. Cycles of life. Endings. Beginnings. Consciousness and awareness become like a web, connecting everything and catching small things now and again. In The Seraphim, Jesse Lenz has caught many small things, and holds them between his pages like brief flowers.” - David Campany
“The Seraphim is one beautiful book. Tender, haunting, mesmerizing, and affirming. Beautifully produced with next-level, gorgeous printing” - Raymond Meeks
“Jesse Lenz's The Seraphim centers on his children in a pastoral setting somewhere in Ohio. With the exception of ominous towers that carry high voltage lines in a few of the backgrounds, the photos depict farm scenes that could have been made at any time in the past half century. The photographer also makes forays into the adjacent woods and takes astonishing photos of a scurrying opossum, a snake in a tree, a fox by its hole, and other animals. Two pictures of a hawk on a truncated dead tree is perhaps a nod to Stephen Gill's The Pillar, but whereas Gill used an automatic motion-detecting camera, Lenz is always present and the experience captured feels that way.” - Mark Steinmetz
“The Seraphim: A book in which different worlds catch up with one another and intertwine. A book in which heart, brain, soul, and stomach are unified. A supernatural book of gazing and running, of rising and falling, of bloom and wilt, of growth and decay.” - Igor Posner
“Jesse Lenz continues his investigation of daily life on his family’s Ohio farm in this second volume of The Seven Seals. In The Seraphim, his subjects primarily include his six children and their daily landscape with its many animals. The result is alarmingly specific, with layers of ethereal, complex beauty. I look forward to seeing what happens next.” - Andrea Modica
“Lenz celebrates family and landscape as inextricably bound, with children and animals all creatures in an everyday arcadia. He does so with patience, grace, and necessary hints of darkness. The book is beautifully printed with a deep immersion in the wellspring of tones between black and white that classically dedicated analog photographers know are still well worth honoring. I keep going back to some sunflowers in a field; there are many and all are bowed and the sky is dark and dirty, maybe with coming snow.” - Jem Cohen
“Jesse depicts the world through his kids like an army of poets. The Seraphim, drawing us a life like our dream from of a tasty summer sleep that we forgot within hours: stalking snakes, birds, raccoons, deers and the locusts as ever buzzing in the background. A sleep that heals the aspects on our broken world, make us forget the imperfectness of life.” - Sabiha Çimen
“The second in a series of books, after The Locusts, that are ultimately a legacy to his children, The Seraphim dives deep into the intimacy and infinitesimal lives of family and landscape. Thoreau comes to mind with nature as the ultimate metaphor.” - Jason Eskenazi
“I continue to be amazed by the way in which Lenz embraces his capital-R Romantic nature (through his love of capital-N romantic Nature) and yet manages to keep it in control. Very few photographers lean so fully into the misty and the mystical and come back with any sort of coherent tale to tell.” - Tim Carpenter