Martha Naranjo Sandoval

Published by MACK

2025
304 pages, 6.3” ✕ 8.7”
OTA bound Softcover
Limited copies in New Zealand
Purchase here:
$95 NZ dollars (will show as USD in cart)

A copy will be mailed to you from Wellington + a signed postcard from the United States will arrive separately.

Martha Naranjo Sandoval was recently in both Wellington and Auckland attending Photobook/NZ, giving a keynote, 1-on-1 portfolio reviews and participating in the bookfair.

From Martha Naranjo Sandoval, Small Death by Olga YatskevichSince relocating to New York City in 2014, the Mexican visual artist Martha Naranjo Sandoval has been thoughtfully and consistently documenting her everyday life using the same 35mm film camera. During that time, her photographs have accumulated into an archive of roughly 500 rolls of film. [...] Naranjo Sandoval’s first full length monograph, Small Death, draws deeply from this archive, offering an intimately tactile meditation on migration, identity, and the subtle ruptures that accompany personal transformation. Unfolding like a visual diary, the book traces her decade-long journey from Mexico City to New York, rendered in film grain, golden light, and introspective self-portraiture.

The title, Small Death, stems from Naranjo Sandoval’s sharp observation: “You die a little when you emigrate. The person that you were no longer exists.” This sentiment permeates the book’s structure and tone, offering a layered narrative that is both intimate and expansive. The photobook is built from her growing image archive, distilled into a sequence that feels both deliberate and organic. It is not a linear story, but rather a constellation of moments, and each image is a fragment of a larger emotional and cultural transition.