The 7 Best Photography Books of 2024

I first met Maya Meisner in 2019 at the Filter Photo Festival portfolio reviews in Chicago. It ended up being more than just a meeting. Meisner had a story for me and planned to create a book that tells this story through any photographic medium. A very personal and ominous visual diary.

Meisner told a dark story about how he and his family narrowly escaped a serial killer in the late 1990s.The Yosemite Killer. I was captivated. I couldn’t wait for this true crime log to come to life.This year he released what he called a stunning and intimate collection The Cedar Lodge.

The best part of this book is just photos, and a small insert at the end with all the words you need to know to understand Meisner’s historical case. :

In 1999, Cedar Lodge master Kerry Steiner killed a woman and two children at a motel near Yosemite National Park (authorities later found another female victim). Months before this horrific crime, Maya and her parents and sister were guests at Cedar Lodge. where a man tried to break into their hotel room in the middle of the night.His father yelled at the intruder and scared him.

Meisner and her sister were kept in the dark until her mother finally revealed the family secret to her in 2014. Since then, she’s been collecting articles and archival footage her parents shot from the 1999 trip the current landscapes, the frosty forest surrounding the crime scene.

More than 10 years later, Meissner’s The Cedar Lodge serves as a visual summary of that work, its imagery and design carefully considered to be sensitive to the victims and their surviving families.

Meissner’s dedication at the beginning of the book speaks of them all. For my father, for being our protector and encouraging my adventures, for my sister, for being by my side through it all. And most of all to Carol, Julie, Sylvina and Joe.” -Anna Goldwater Alexander