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This four-book set constitutes volume 4 of American publisher TBW Books’ Annual Series. While each of the four photobooks functions as a stand-alone work, there is a shared dialogue taking place between them all.

In “Bottom of the Lake,” Christian Patterson depicts his own hometown as an uninviting place of latent danger; Alessandra Sanguinetti’s “Sorry, Welcome,” too, is a ruthless but much more positive examination of the artist’s own life, captured in black-and-white; in “Erasure,” Raymond Meeks blends different photographic approaches and techniques as he explores his new home; and in “Utoquai,” German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans observes and analyzes the body (the human species within the individual) in close-ups of single parts and areas.

Christian Patterson “Bottom of the Lake”

Working from a unique perspective and restrained stylistic viewpoint, Patterson continues to build on the visual narrative that propelled him to the forefront with his earlier book, Redheaded Peckerwood. In “Bottom of the Lake,” he revisits his Wisconsin hometown to reveal a dark, cold, and beer soaked world that looks unmistakably his. “Bottom of The Lake” would later go on to act as the groundwork for a larger body of work of the same name published by Walter Konig in 2015.

Alessandra Sanguinetti “Sorry, Welcome”

Sanguinetti veers away from the previous work that proved her to be a photographic powerhouse. “Sorry, Welcome” is a glimpse into the artist's life the way it looked throughout the winter of 2012. The work was shot over a short period of time in which Sanguinetti took a step back becoming a voyeur of her own life. As a new romantic relationship bridges an ocean of distance we are also privy to watching her own daughter gain a new older sister. The work is pointed, tender, and a loving tribute to the family structure.

Raymond Meeks “Erasure”

Meek's poetic work plays out as the artist rides a bicycle around his newly adopted east coast home base. Loss and longing share equal roles as the artist traverses the concrete, snapping away in a style that marries the objectivity of Google Street View with the inquisitive sensitivity of Robert Frank. Using printing techniques that involve over-exposing and laying what Meek's calls a "base fog" to the image, the artist literally masks what he deems "the painful and ugly" in his view of the world. This method of darkroom-manipulation creates an unsettling yet profoundly beautiful and unique book.

Wolfgang Tillmans “Utoquai”

Taking his book title from a bathhouse in Zürich, Tillmans closes out the series with a deeply personal visual investigation of a single muse throughout the entirety of the book. It’s rare that a close up photo of an ear or an eye or a knee can be both endlessly interesting and unmistakably authored by one individual, but here Tillmans achieves just that. By re-examining the human body through photography we are left with a new understanding of viewing images by one of the world’s most prominent artists of our time.”