4 Sides of the Table
Ruth Lauer Manenti
RM
English
Softcover
88 pages
240 × 330 mm
2025
ISBN 9788410290457
The black-and-white photographs throughout 4 Sides present fragments from a sparse home. Images taken through doorways into empty rooms, plates and bowls stacked on shelves, a rattan chair at a wooden table. This single small space setting provides a sense of exploring a place despite the restriction of the four walls of the home. A human presence is added with a series of images of a woman who never returns the photographer’s gaze. Instead, we are presented with snapshots of her, from close ups of her elderly, delicate hands, resting in her lap against the backdrop of her white cotton gown, to her legs resting on a bed of white sheets. The final text of the book reveals that the elderly woman in 4 Sides is Manenti’s late mother’s best friend, June. Manenti asked to photograph June between 2022 to 2024 to find a way to connect with her mother and engage with her own grief and sense of belonging. The project ended up being one of connection and loss for both women, when June’s daughter unexpectedly passed away during that time. She chose to continue being photographed by Manenti and the images vibrate with a sense of searching and longing.
(Source: brooklynrail.org/2026/05/art_books/ruth-lauer-manenti-4-sides-of-the-table)
About the Artist
Ruth Lauer Manenti received an MFA from The Yale School of Art in painting and drawing in 1994. In 2012, she was given a large format camera and taught herself how to use it. Gradually she shifted from drawing and painting to photography. Her mother was also an artist who left behind a legacy of unknown work. Growing up, each time her family moved her mother had to leave paintings behind. Part of Ruth’s determination as an artist is to reward her mother for her efforts and to create a continuum. Ruth recently graduated from The Hartford School of Art in photography where she received a merit scholarship for her studies. In 2023 her photobook I Imagined It Empty received the Star Photobook Dummy Award and was published by RM Editorial. In 2025 her second book 4 Sides of The Table was published also by RM Editorial. She is curious how photography can visually reflect themes of love, loss, absence and time passing. Since breaking her neck in a car crash at the age of twenty, Ruth has developed a spiritual life and practice that has informed much of her photographic work. She lives in the Catskill Mountains in NY with her husband, a nurse and tai chi practitioner and their 2 cats.
www.ruthlauermanenti.com
(Source: www.ruthlauermanenti.com/bio)
About the Publisher
RM is an independent, prestigious publisher focusing primarily on photography and contemporary art, while also maintaining a curated catalogue of Latin American literary classics. RM currently has offices in Spain and Mexico and with more than 500 titles by or about writers and artists of international stature such as: Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Graciela Iturbide, Saul Leiter, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Martin Parr, Julio Cortázar, Daido Moriyama, Luis Barragán, Diego Rivera, Masao Yamamoto, Juan Rulfo, Jeff Wall and Pablo Ortiz Monasterio among others. RM’s work aims to enhance the trends and legacy of visual culture in Latin America, maintaining a line of work of the highest standards which reflects on the history and origins of the visual image.
https://editorialrm.com/en/
(Source: https://editorialrm.com/en/sobre-nosotros/)
