DESCRIPTION

A photo-based exploration of modern-day witches from all over America, beautifully capturing the various ways "witch-ness" belongs to those who claim it.

Based on her critically acclaimed exhibition, Major Arcana collects the work of photographer Frances F. Denny, who traveled around the U.S. photographing and interviewing a diverse group of people who identify as witches.

This book is an exploration of contemporary witchery told through striking photographs and short, inspiring essays written by the "Terry Gross of witches," Pam Grossman, and the subjects themselves. From occultists and Neo-pagans, to herbalists and Wiccan High Priestesses, Denny's portraits capture the face of modern American witchcraft and challenge our assumptions about who and what a witch really is.

Photography by Frances F. Denny

Foreword by Pam Grossman, Q & A with Horace D. Ballard

Clothbound with iridescent foil stamped cover / 7 x 10 inches

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frances F. Denny is an award-winning and internationally exhibited photographer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Architectural Digest, among many others. Frances lives in Brooklyn.

REVIEWS

"Like other portraitists, such as the contemporary Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra, or the twentieth-century German master August Sander, Denny captures her subjects suspended delicately between performativity and naturalism. These self-identified witches are positioning themselves before us, fully conscious of our eye, and Denny is allowing them a lovely three-dimensionality." – The New Yorker

“…‘MAJOR ARCANA: Witches in America’ is more than a snapshot of fringe counterculture characters. Denny privileges the women themselves over their practices—their occult considerations are only part of their identities. Whatever the roots and shapes of their particular beliefs, Denny’s subjects are part of a growing feminist resistance to the patriarchal politics that lurk just outside of her frames. Not only does Denny subvert tired witch tropes, she undercuts more widespread misogynistic views, as well…As Denny further dissects the subject, she enlarges our ideas of what it means to be a woman living in America today.” – Artsy

“’Denny’s project is timely in the age of #MeToo and the recent Kavanaugh hearings. It holds enormous inspiration for women who are waking up from their own silencing and seeing… a path into their own vitality and into finding their voice.’” – The Daily Mail