©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Book Cover of We Will Return to You, published by St. Lucy Books

How does the generational transfer of memory shape our inner and external worlds?

I first discovered Hannah Altman’s photography early in high school while scrolling through Vanity Fair’s 2021 Silver List, highlighting exceptional lens-based artists. The intimacy of her images proved very moving to my 17-year-old self, but I also felt enraptured by the work’s narrative scope, which cleverly blurred the lines between fact and fiction, traditional and contemporary practices. Since then, I find myself returning to the pictures consistently, engaging in the radical act of rediscovery and reemergence.

Hannah Altman masterfully visualizes the lyricism embodied by Jewish folkloric tradition through We Will Return to You. A luminous meditation on ritual, memory, and the act of carrying history forward, the book presents an idiosyncratic narrative structure. It considers images as fragments of liturgy, building a space where the sacred and the ordinary coexist. Altman’s photographs move gracefully between still life, portraiture, and landscape, using gesture and object to evoke both intimacy and myth.

The exceptional strength lies in the refusal to over-explain. Symbols and ritual objects appear, reappear, and shift in meaning as we turn the pages. There is a quiet tension between presence and absence, between what can be named and what resists language. Altman’s use of light is especially powerful—often warm, natural, and soft—imbuing each scene with the suggestion of memory rather than simple observation.

The gorgeous design by Saint Lucy Books deepens Altman’s images: spacious layouts, unhurried pacing, and the inclusion of a short prose text create a contemplative rhythm. Together, these elements compel the viewer not just to gaze, but to linger in the stillness. The work evokes questions surrounding viewership and participation amongst sacred Jewish traditions that somberly recall historical violence and waves of anti-Semitism. Those seeking explicit entry points undergo a revelatory experience, wherein they are trusted, as an audience, to participate in the act of interpretation, which the photographer has tenderly engaged in through the healing practice of imagemaking.

We Will Return to You solidifies Hannah Altman as a foundational voice in contemporary photography, and her profound exploration of how images can embody memory, myth, and longing in a single frame. It is a book that rewards innumerable readings, a work that feels less like an archive and more like an invocation—an offering for those willing to slow down and return to it again and again.

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Armful, 2024, from We Will Return to You

Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work explores narrative and the transmission of memory, often articulated through the interplay of light and performance.

Her photobooks Kavana (Kris Graves Projects, 2020) and We Will Return to You (Saint Lucy Books, 2025) are held in libraries including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty, Harvard University, and Stanford University.

Altman’s photographs have been published in The New York Times, Artforum, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, LensCulture, and British Journal of Photography. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, MK&G Hamburg, Houston Center for Photography, Koffler Arts, Athens Photo Festival, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

She was a 2022 Hopper Prize finalist, the 2022 Portraits Hellerau Photography Award First Prize winner, a 2023 Innovate Grant recipient, and a 2023 Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist. She was the inaugural Blanksteen Artist in Residence at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale in 2022–2023. Altman lives in Boston and is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Brandeis University.

Instagram: @hannahaltman and @saint_lucy_books

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Baba Yaga (Puppet), 2023, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Braid Tug, 2021, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Embody, 2023, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Foundation, 2024, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Hiding (Flying), 2023, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Molting, 2023, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, My Weight in Salt, 2023, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, One Hollow to Another, 2022, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Passover Births, 2021, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Piercing (Talisman), 2024, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Plagues, 2024, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Variation I, 2020, from We Will Return to You

©Hannah Altman/Saint Lucy Books, Yad (You), 2023, from We Will Return to You

About Saint Lucy Books

Instagram @saint_lucy_books

Saint Lucy Books was established in 2017 by artist and writer Mark Alice Durant. Our first book, Hidden Mother by Laura Larson, was shortlisted for the Aperture / Paris Photo Best First Photobook of the Year. Since then, we have released 16 critically-acclaimed titles. Our books have been featured in The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aperture, the British Journal of Photography, Lenscratch, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail, The Guardian, 4Columns, and many other notable publications.

Saint Lucy works on one book at a time; we value collaboration and respect to produce elegant, idiosyncratic, and accessible books that combine words and images to celebrate contemporary photographic artists, and to explore the marginal, hidden, and parallel histories of photography.

The name Lucy derives from the Latin word for light—Lux. Saint Lucy was a young Christian, living in Siracusa Sicily in the third century, who was martyred during the Diocletian Persecution when she refused to marry a pagan nobleman. She suffered numerous tortures for her refusal. One apocryphal version of the story has Saint Lucy taking out her own eyes and offering them to her would-be suitor because he admired them, declaring “Here are my eyes that you desire, now leave me to God.” Saint Lucy is the patron saint of the blind and protector of sight. In devotional images she is most often portrayed holding a golden platter on which her eyes rest. Saint Lucy Books’ logo derives from a 1474 painting by Francesco del Cossa in which a regal Lucy proffers a stem adorned with eyes in place of blossoms. The palm branch in her right hand represents victory over evil. Saint Lucy’s feast day is December 13, which in the Julian calendar was thought to be the longest night of the year. Lucy acknowledges darkness and the coming of light.

Mark Alice Durant: Publisher and Editor

Guenet Abraham: Art Direction and Book Design

Sara Hinterlong: Website Design

Caleb Cain Marcus / Luminosity Lab: Contributing Designer

Dana Rakhim / Pushing Books: Publicist

Christian Lee is a 43rd Annual Telly Award® winning visual storyteller and Hoyt Scholar at UCLA. His work has been published in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Vogue, the Los Angeles Times, the World Photography Organization, Lenscratch, LensCulture, and Booooooom. Lee is an Emma Bowen Foundation Fellow, Sony World Photo Honoree, The KALH Future Grant Recipient, YoungArts Winner, and a Scholastic National Medalist with recognition from over 60 competitions and publications. Awarded the 2025 Lenscratch Student Prize (Top 3), he is a Class of XXXVII alumnus of Canon’s Eddie Adams Workshop, an Up Next Photographer at Diversify Photo, and a Member of NAACP, Film Independent, and AAJA, whose moving and still images explore themes of youth culture, assimilation, and intergenerational trauma, all within communities of color. Lee currently works in Creative Affairs at Warner Bros.

Instagram: @christianmakesfilms