I’m enjoying an unusual book called A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart.  It’s a simple idea, yet so very clever…and endearing.  I’m contemplating doing this with someone.  It would even be a spectacular project for kids learning how to use a camera.

The two authors are friends.  Mav lives in Portland, Maine, Stephanie in Portland, Oregon.  This book represents their visual conversation for a year.

In the Foreword: “Starting with the deceptively simple plan to take and post a photograph each morning, Barnes and Vettese have created, amidst the noise and speed of the internet, a place of quiet reflection and great beauty.

“And that clean, spare beauty is close at hand, formed out of the small habits and routines of daily life: vivid green mittens on a blue table paired with a white ladder juxtaposed with a fried egg in a white pan, its handle following the same diagonal as the wire some three thousand miles away; a galvanized tin tub brimming with rainbow Swiss chard allied to Stephanie’s photograph of an empty bed, the floral pattern of the blue and green sheets eerily echoing Mav’s journey to the farmer’s market.”

An example from their website (Summer: August 8, 2007):

For more pictures and explanations, see A Year of Mornings.

Their second book A Year of Evenings comes out this summer.

What a thoughtful way to stop and look and see.