LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR I Will Keep You In Good Company

LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR I Will Keep You In Good Company

I Will Keep You in Good Company brings together pages and fragments from over twenty of Ghanaian-Russian artist Liz Johnson Artur’s personal workbooks – handmade volumes she has kept since the early 1990s. Part diary, part experimental playground, these books are where she shaped her photographic language through layering, cutting, annotating, and assembling: a space for processing not only images, but life itself.

Each page is a tactile surface, combining photographic prints on canvas, tracing paper, faxes, and photo stock with screen-prints, handwriting, and clipped texts. The result is a sensorial, intimate archive of moments lived and witnessed – of friends, family, strangers, lovers – held with care and attention.

‘I like to be right next to it, in the middle of it, to take it home’, Johnson Artur writes. ‘To keep them close is a way of giving importance and appreciation.’ These workbooks are acts of presence – visual thinking made physical – and the foundation for her celebrated Black Balloon Archive, a project that honours communities across the African diaspora. I Will Keep You in Good Company is a candid, generous record of a photographer learning not only how to look, but how to stay close.

Mack Books

Mack is a global publisher of award-winning books on art, photography and critical studies. Founded by Michael Mack in London 2010. They work with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, as well as cultural institutions.

SPBH Editions

SPBH Editions, developed in 2011 under the aegis of Self Publish, Be Happy, has established itself as a champion of critical dialogue within contemporary photography and visual culture. What began with a focus on photobooks has evolved to include a wide array of fiction, non-fiction, and critical theory. With a steadfast commitment to producing challenging, experimental, and political publications, SPBH Editions seeks to expand the frontiers of possibilities in publishing.

In January 2024, SPBH Editions became an imprint of MACK.