There’s a hushed brilliance to The Snow Abides, Nina Viviana Cangialosi’s new photobook published by Void. It unfolds with a gentle confidence, inviting readers to drift through its pages and linger over the subtle intersections of memory, loss, and the traces we leave behind.
This project brings together a striking range of material: photographs captured on expired film and smartphones, fragments from NASA’s archives, delicate seventeenth-century illustrations by Robert Fludd, and intimate images drawn from Cangialosi’s own family history. At first glance, these might seem like unrelated elements. Yet under Cangialosi’s careful eye, they become a thoughtful meditation on what it means to remember — and on what remains after someone is gone.
One of the most affecting images is a pixelated photograph of a deer, taken by a friend shortly before her death. This imperfect, almost fragile frame feels charged with absence, speaking to the way memories endure long after the people who shaped them have departed.
Nearby, an old portrait of the artist’s mother, her gaze turned away and distant, deepens the sense of looking back into spaces that can no longer fully be reached. These personal moments are placed alongside broader, almost cosmic references.
Swirling sunspots and intricate diagrams hint at mysteries far beyond individual experience, suggesting that our private losses are bound up with the vast, unknowable forces that shape the universe.
Threaded through this carefully sequenced series are lines by Robert Walser. His spare, resonant words drift across the images like gentle murmurs, reflecting on the fragile scale of human life against the enormity of nothingness, and on how the snow itself seems to inherit the light once held by the sky. Rather than offering neat conclusions, these fragments invite a lingering contemplation of how memories shift and change shape, and how even the act of remembering becomes its own quiet transformation.
What makes The Snow Abides so compelling is the way it moves seamlessly between the deeply personal and the universal. Faint scratches on a nearly featureless image, blurred silhouettes, delicate marks that might be dust or distant stars — all these details evoke the elusive nature of recollection. They draw attention to the fragile boundary between what we hold on to and what inevitably slips away.
At its heart, Cangialosi’s work is a meditation on continuity. Even as photographs fade and stories blur, something persists — not in the same form it once took, but reshaped by time and the act of remembering itself. This photobook becomes a quiet space to explore how the echoes of those we’ve loved might still resonate in unexpected ways.
Void has long shown a sensitivity to publishing projects that carry both emotional and intellectual weight, and The Snow Abides is no exception. It doesn’t announce itself loudly or force its ideas upon the viewer. Instead, it opens up a gentle, introspective space that grows deeper the longer you spend with it.
Cangialosi offers no final answers about absence, memory, or the invisible forces that shape our lives — only an invitation to pause, to reflect, and perhaps to recognise something of our own fleeting experiences mirrored there.
Produced in a strictly limited edition of just 100 handbound copies and presented in an understated slipcase, this is an object as precious as it appears. Every element of its design, guided by João Linneu, Myrto Steirou and Cangialosi herself, carries a quiet sense of intention. The use of Adobe Jenson typography lends the book a timeless gravity, while the sensitive printing by Future Format ensures that even the faintest details emerge with haunting subtlety.
Even as photographs fade and stories blur, something persists — reshaped by time and the act of remembering itself
About the artist
Nina Viviana Cangialosi (born 1977) is an Italian photographer and visual artist currently based in Switzerland. Her practice ranges from installations to editorial projects, and her work has received international recognition and been exhibited in both public institutions and private spaces. In her personal research, Cangialosi draws on materials sourced from public and private archives, as well as found objects. These include photographs, antique texts, unprecious stones, shells and leaves, which she meticulously collects and organises into diaries and assemblages.
Details
- Photographs by Nina Viviana Cangialosi
- Texts by various authors, with excerpts from Robert Walser
- Edited and designed by João Linneu, Myrto Steirou & Nina Viviana Cangialosi
- Printed by Future Format; bound by Future Format & Void
- Language: English
- Typeface: Adobe Jenson (Regular, Italic, Regular Small Caps)
- 84 pages, 20.7 x 30.7 cm
- Handbound in a slipcase, limited to 100 copies
- ISBN 978-618-5479-31-2
For more information or to purchase The Snow Abides, visit void.photo.
- Images courtesy of Void
