A new release from L’Artiere, debuting at Paris Photo 2025
With Calling the Bird Home, American photographer Cheryle St. Onge returns to the heart of her practice, an intimate space where memory, caregiving, and photography intertwine. Published by L’Artiere, the book explores the delicate bond between mother and daughter, and the way images can hold on to love even as memory fades.
A portrait of presence through dementia
For years, Cheryle lived alongside her mother on the same farm in New England. When her mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia, their shared creative rhythm shifted. What began as a photographic collaboration became, over time, a form of caregiving, a visual language of tenderness and resilience.
Each photograph in Calling the Bird Home holds that quiet exchange: gestures of care, fragments of daily life. Through these moments, the book transforms loss into presence, silence into dialogue.
Design and collaboration
Designed by Teresa Piardi, the book features a refined, tactile structure: four intimate mini-books interwoven within a larger sequence, reflecting the layered nature of memory itself. The materiality of the object, from its exposed stitching to its rich paper texture, embodies the fragility and strength of human connection.
A meditation on love, time, and the act of looking
Both deeply personal and universally resonant, Calling the Bird Home speaks to anyone who has witnessed the passage of time, illness, and affection within a family.
It’s not a story about dementia, but about devotion, about how photography can preserve the essence of a relationship even as words disappear.
Pre-order and presentation
The book will officially launch at Paris Photo 2025, with a limited pre-order open until November 15th.
All copies purchased during this period will be signed by Cheryle St. Onge.
