STILL, The Art of Noticing by Mary Jo Hoffman, Monacelli, 2024
Leafing through the pages of “STILL, The Art of Noticing” by Mary Jo Hoffman, I found myself gasping aloud at the beauty of the author’s full-page portraits of nature. Hoffman is an artist, a photographer, a wife, a mother and a former aerospace engineer, a background that marries a scientist’s discipline with a keen sense of observation that is remarkably evident in her images.
Long before this beautiful book came into the world, STILL began as a daily project where Hoffman would photograph a piece of nature collected from the landscape surrounding her home in Shorewood, Minnesota, then post the image to her blog by the same name. That was January 1, 2012, and every day since has found the artist adding to her collection. “Finding each day’s subject required me to live … in a heightened state of awareness that I found made me extraordinarily happy, because I was not just sleepwalking through the obligations of a busy life but seeing and noticing all the time.”
In the book’s introduction, Hoffman describes her “quirky” project as a form of “creative calisthenics,” a way to remain intellectually challenged even while deep in the “messiest middle years” of family and earning. But over time the author says her practice became “a respite from the enervating buzz of contemporary life, a place to stop and look at one thing at a time.”
Compelling macro photographs, like this image of iced crabapples, encourage readers to slow down and pay attention. Photo: Mary Jo Hoffman from STILL, The Art of Noticing, Monacelli
The power of observation pins our attention, slows time, and grounds us in place. We are what we pay attention to, and what we pay attention to becomes a part of us. Hoffman writes, “What four thousand images (and counting) have shown me is that the daily discipline of looking at the world eventually becomes the habit of living in the world.”
Gardeners, perhaps more than most, are keen observers of nature. Are the berries ripe? Do I need to water, or will it freeze tonight? We notice leaves as they begin shifting from summer green to fall fire. The passage of time, days that stretch longer and warmer as well as diminishing and cooler on the flip side of the year, is the fabric of our gardening year.
This image of twigs arranged into a wreath on a stark white background is characteristic of the author/artist’s minimalist approach to capturing portraits of nature. Photo: Mary Jo Hoffman from STILL, The Art of Noticing, Monacelli
Six personal essays form the structure of the book and offer a look into Hoffman’s motivation and commitment to her practice. In one she describes her commitment to working on a white background with a minimalist composition. After a year-long flirtation shooting on a black background, the artist returned to white. “My affair with black was passionate and stormy, and like all such relationships, it could not be sustained.”
Another essay describes how Hoffman found power in adopting a daily rhythm. “Dailiness takes all the pressure off any given day. There are no important or unimportant days. There is just one day after another. Showing up and remaining in a state of noticing.”
Hoffman shares her fascination with the ancient Japanese calendar in which four familiar seasons, spring, summer, fall and winter, become 24 more nuanced segments further distilled into 72 micro-seasons, each lasting about five days briefly characterized by a moment in nature. The concept became the book’s framework illustrated by 275 images chosen to depict the “Time of Sap,” “Time of Tall Grasses,” or “Time of Bitter Wind,” moments grounded in the author’s bioregion of the Northern Great Lakes.
STILL, The Art of Noticing by Mary Jo Hoffman, Monacelli, 2024
Intimate photos of snow and ice, seedpods and blossoms and sticks, wildlife and stones carry us into Hoffman’s world even as they prompt us to look more closely at our place with a fresh perspective. The book’s exquisite production value with images beautifully reproduced on crisp white paper stock makes STILL a gift that I encourage you to read and share with others.
This review first appeared in Pacific NW Magazine in The Seattle Times in September 2024.
In mid-October the Hoffman family lost their home in a devastating fire. Everyone is fine, however, along with so many family treasures, Mary Jo lost all of her camera equipment and her beloved stash of garden finds. Her daily STILL shots have been suspended as she works to find firm footing, but her plan is to take up her daily practice again in the new year.
L.,
Thanks for posting your review. The samples of Mary Jo Hoffman’s photographs you shared demonstrate her ability to isolate and focus upon beautiful elements in nature. I know I’m stating the obvious. But her photographic skill//approach of masking everything else in the photos forces us to see what she sees. That’s an effective way of teaching us to notice details and beauty.
J.
I’ve often heard that the role of an “artist” is to make us see new truths. Mary Jo’s work elevates common bits nature found all around us. Opening our eyes to the beauty.
Thank you for a magnificent post. As a writer, I find myself cherishing every word – yours and hers. As a gardener and lover of art, I’m cherishing every image. As with Margaret Renkl’s book The Comfort of Crows, this is a much-needed salve, balm, anodyne, respite, haven in this troubling November. Thank you again Lurene.
Diane, I completely understand the comfort to be found in nature and Mary Jo is brilliant in capturing details for us all to see. Take very good care of you and yours.
Correx: “Lorene,” so sorry.
The idea of “noticing” often gets lost in the hum of daily life. Thank you for letting us see how intelligent noticing can center us.
Yes, noticing the natural world around us is grounding. I also feel like it introduces an expansiveness into our days. The more we look, the more we see.
What a wonderful review of an incredible book. Then I read the postscript and felt so sad! I hope they can rebuild and she continues with her amazing art.
I am always in awe of the little things here on the land I inhabit. This morning it’s the frost on each weed and the needles on the pines after a 12 degree night. And seeing so many changes in 40 years here… and so much that stays the same. I feel sorry for those who don’t notice or pay attention, they miss so much of life.
Noticing is a superpower that reveals the invisible. As Mary Jo and her family keenly feel, life is messy and broken at times. Watching the natural world is a simple daily practice that carries us through the good and the less than good.