The Lottery
Melissa Catanese
Melissa Catanese (born 1979) tells in The Lottery a story using, amongst others, archive material. In fact, it is one of the strongest examples of using archives of existing photographs in the past few years. Combining found vernacular and archival pictures with contemporary original photographs and well-established literary references in a way that is original, remarkably seamless and genuinely moving is no mean feat. And this book is absolutely masterful in its use of sequencing and imagery of all kinds to take the reader on a profoundly unique emotional rollercoaster of a trip that is both haunting and lasting. It makes The Lottery a beautiful and mysterious book.
The Lottery takes it title from a 1948 short story by Shirley Jackson. The “lottery” in the story refers to a traditional process of selecting one person from the population of the village, who gets stoned to death. Catanese mixes vernacular photographs from the collection of Peter Cohen with images drawn from the NASA archives and some of her own photographs.
The Lottery unfolds a mesmerizing tapestry of speculative fiction. An exploration of an anxious human civilization caught in the tumultuous currents of an uncertain future and the lingering echoes of its past. The images evoke the mob mentality and tibalism of Shirley Jackson’s short story as well as the enigmatic uncertainties of our present reality. We see catastrophic forces and events alternated with scenes of serenity, tenderness and fragility. The photographs unveil a society suspended between serenity and chaos, tenderness and horror. Crowds gather to gawk, passively entertained by unseen horrors.
The images can be divided in two groups. Pictures of nature and pictures of people. The images of nature show us nature at its grimmest. They are alternated with images of people. Whose reactions to the grim nature are either indifference or surrender. People look at the grim nature as if it were entertainment.
Uncanny and disturbing, The Lottery leaves us in a turmoil of uncertainty. Melissa Catanese’s pictures show a world that is upside down, fragile and haunting.
The Lottery
Photographer: Melissa Catanese
Published by Witty Books in corporation with The Ice Plant
Published in 2023
Hardcover, 80 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Chosen by people immersed in the photobook world as one of their favorite photobooks of 2023