Small Death from Martha Naranjo Sandoval is a photobook that visualises how emigration impacts selfhood

Martha Naranjo Sandoval’s new photobook has an intriguing title: Small Death. The two words, when placed together, are loaded with meaning and potential interpretation, something the photographer intended. “I wanted a title that was not static and pointed at different things – petite mort, muerte chiquita,” Martha says. “But to me it also alludes to other kinds of small death. Like when you emigrate and leave some of who you were behind.”

In 2014, Martha packed up and moved her life from her home country of Mexico to New York. As many can likely relate to, these moments in life feel so momentous – but, when mixed up in the mayhem of packing, planning and moving, we can forget to take time to create something that memorialises it. The instinct in Martha, however, was strong. “My life was about to change. I wanted to document my new life in a whole different country, being truly on my own for the first time,” she says. She was also inspired by someone else to pick up her camera – her father – who started photography following a big change in his life, the birth of Martha.

There was one final, more practical reason – the ease of creation. In Mexico, analogue photography had proved hard to practice. “Getting film was hard, developing was hard, scanning was hard, printing was hard,” says Martha. “I had the suspicion that it was going to be easier in New York, so I brought my analogue camera with me when I was packing.”

Flicking through the book feels like flicking through Martha’s life. Not its seminal moments, rather the minutiae of everyday existence. Small moments of intimacy between Martha and her partner (punctuated by cuddles with their cat) and days out spent with her mother and father are backdropped by the comforting certainty of changing seasons, indicated by the changes in clothing, the colour of the skies and the lushness of the greenery. Martha is brilliant at making the mundane spectacular. One self portrait shows the photographer standing in front of a fire hydrant spurting out water, met in the air by a mini-rainbow protruding from the oily road. It captures one of those everyday mirages that sometimes feel too good to be true and it feels like a metaphor for just how beautiful and unexpected life can be.

On her process, Martha says that she is “more or less aware that a picture might happen”, but is never too strict with herself. “I never plan a picture but I often have images already percolating in my imagination.” It’s important for Martha that the viewer gets a sense of this internal process, rather than solely its result. “I recently saw a video of Graciela Iturbide talking about how there are two key moments in photo making: the moment when you push the shutter button, and the moment when you find the picture in your contact sheets,” says Martha. “I do think she is right that these very distinct moments are equally important. I would add another, I think it matters how you choose to show them.” Rather than simply showing ‘finished’ images, Martha also infuses the book with scans of contact sheets, giving the book an ‘unedited’ feeling, but in the best way possible. As opposed to feeling like you’ve been given a highly-stylised, specifically chosen view into Martha’s life and relationships, it feels as though you’re being presented with every test, every image, every moment.

The pages are housed in a deep red binding. On the front cover sits a sole photograph of Martha from behind, taken from a test sheet, with the title and Martha’s name only featured on the book’s spine. When you lift the cover, you’re thrown straight into Martha’s visual world. In fact, there’s no text in the book until the very final page, where Martha speaks about the book, its influences and those involved. On this lack of written description, Martha says: “I believe you can tell stories just through sequencing and juxtaposition.” She continues: “As much as there is a story that I was thinking of when making this book, when you do not anchor meaning with text you are not making statements, but encouraging questions.” Rather than having traditional chapters, Martha breaks up the “grand narrative” of the book up with white pages featuring a small self-portrait.

Today, Martha has been settled in New York for over a decade and she’s fully immersed in the city’s photography scene: she teaches, manages a photobook library, works at a photobook shop and runs her own publishing house. The book now marks another milestone: something so personal to Martha has made it out into the real world for all to see, independent of its creator. “I like when this happens to my images because I am excited to see where they go on their own,” Martha ends. “It’s both exhilarating and overwhelming to ponder that the book is going to be on so many different bookshelves, in conversation with so many other people and books.”