Diana Markosian and Coco Mellors in Conversation

Overview

Wednesday, December 4

6:30 p.m. EST

McNally Jackson Seaport, 4 Fulton St, New York, NY

Join Aperture and McNally Jackson Bookstore for a conversation between artist Diana Markosian and author Coco Mellors to celebrate the launch of Markosian’s most recent publication, Father (Aperture, 2024), an intimate and engrossing diaristic portrayal of estrangement and reconnection, recounted through documentary photographs, family snapshots, text, and visual ephemera.

Diana Markosian: Father presents the photographer’s journey to another place and another time, where Markosian attempts to piece together an image of a familiar stranger—her long-lost father. The book explores her father’s absence, her reconciliation with him, and the shared emptiness of their prolonged estrangement. The images, made over the course of a decade, take place in her father’s home in Armenia. In Markosian’s first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), the photographer recreates the story of her family’s journey from post–Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s. Father uses both documentary photographs and archives of objects, letters, and vernacular images to probe the fifteen years of absence and separation from the photographer’s childhood.

This event is presented in partnership with McNally Jackson. RSVP is required for guests to reserve a seat, or a seat in addition to purchasing a copy of Father (Aperture, 2024).

McNally Jackson kindly asks attendees to hold their place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the event on any product in store or in our bar & café. If you have a change of heart or plans, write to events@mcnallyjackson.com and they’ll gladly refund you and release your spot, up to 24 hours before the event. Thanks for understanding, and for supporting your local bookstore.

—

Diana Markosian (born in Moscow, 1989) is among the leaders of a new generation of photographers and lens-based artists advancing documentary storytelling through image-making. Her photographs have been published in Vanity Fair, Vogue, and the New Yorker. Her work is represented by Galerie les filles du calvaire, Paris. The artist’s acclaimed first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), was selected as one of the top books of the year by Time and the Museum of Modern Art Magazine. She holds an MS from Columbia University in New York.

Coco Mellors grew up in London and New York, where she received her MFA in fiction from New York University. Her debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, was a Sunday Times bestseller, has been translated into over fifteen languages, and is currently being adapted for television by Warner Bros and Brownstone Productions. Her second novel, Blue Sisters, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller in the UK. It will be published in the US, among other countries, in September.

—