© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

A Walk on Cape Cod is a beautifully crafted and deeply considered book published and bound by NECK Press. An ode and love letter to Cape Cod, it pairs Eileen Myles’s writing, which creates the bones and structure of a narrative, alongside Cole Barash’s photographs, the book’s connective tissue. Together, the two’s work is interwoven and eloquently guides us from start to finish.

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

Myles’s writing is a bit stream of consciousness, riddled with comedic, snarky, and punchy thoughts and remarks. As they navigate Cape Cod, they weave together memories and humorous anecdotes, while often harkening their experiences back to Henry David Thereou’s, creating parallels between his life and writing. Despite that, they don’t take themself too seriously and break the fourth wall many times, which keeps the writing lighthearted and engaging.

The memory-rich text pairs perfectly with Cole Barash’s photos, which are almost dripping with feelings of nostalgia. The atmosphere he captures in each landscape and structure feels dense in history, and transports the viewer to Cape Cod. In isolation, the traces of the past and the lives of people navigating the land are present in nearly all of the images, and through thoughtful sequencing, they also build upon one another to capture the Cape’s unique charm and character.

Although the photos absolutely stand on their own, each individually stunning and spanning a variety of locations, times of day, and scenes, they are well elevated by Myles’s writing. The combination of text and image beautifully works together to craft an immersive world, easy to get lost in, and demanding multiple flip throughs.

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

Complimenting the content, the printing and book design choices elevate the project to incredibly high heights, and are what make this something truly special. The texture created through the photograph’s natural grain, paper choices, and riso printing technique produces a wonderfully grainy quality, perfectly mirroring the sand-laden landscape of Cape Cod. Which, alongside the orange pages, thread, and wooden covers, encapsulates the aesthetics of the book’s subject matter in quite an extraordinary way.

The sequence, and how it bounces between text and images, and the inclusion of orange paper, which splits it up even further, feels so meticulous and well thought out. Also, those moments where images are printed on orange paper jump out as a highlight, and a delightful addition to the design. The length of image runs vs. text-heavy sections is executed so well to keep you invested and moving through the book.

A Walk on Cape Cod is a reminder of how the physicality and thoughtful execution of a photo book can create an experience extraordinarily memorable and specific to the medium. It effortlessly intertwines text and image, and takes advantage of every aspect of photo book design to create a project that truly feels singular and unique.

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

A Walk on Cape Cod gathers the writing of Eileen Myles and photographs of Cole Barash on the occasion of their 32 mile walks along the Cape Cod shoreline, 170 years after Thoreau did it and wrote about it and though like him they chronicle the flora fauna shoreline ocean people dogs ghosts thoughts feelings sand collapsing houses sculptures wonder pain sound color etc. Cole and Eileen’s versions are something oblique to his and less linear, less singular, granular or more like a palimpsest and with depth like that, like sediment, dissembling, grains of sand, fog, photographic grain, grain from the Riso, bark fibers in the paper, trees already the paper, wood covers…

Essay by Eileen Myles, photographs by Cole Barash

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© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

© Neck Press, Eileen Myles, Cole Barash

Jake Benzinger (he/him) is a photographer, book artist, and writer based in Rockland, Maine; he received his BFA in photography from Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. His work explores self-created mythos, weaving together imagery to navigate the space between fiction and reality, investigating themes of identity, mysticism, animism, and death.

His work has been shown nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Haute Photographie Rotterdam, Center for Fine Art Photography, Glasgow Gallery of Photography, 82Parris, Panopticon Gallery, RIT City Space Gallery, and more. He has been featured by numerous platforms, including GUP Magazine, Lensculture, Float Magazine, Lenscratch, Transference Magazine, and Fraction Magazine, and his publications are held in collections at the National Gallery of Art, the School of Visual Arts, SMFA at Tufts, and the Griffin Museum of Photography. His monograph, Like Dust Settling in a Dim-Lit Room (Or Starless Forest), was shortlisted for the 2023 Lucie Photobook Prize.

Jake is a content editor for Lenscratch and the founder/director of wych elm, an independent press creating small-run photo books, zines, and fine art ephemera.