“Blue is a poetic essay that explores the personal experience of depression in mid-life. Smith created a melancholic yet tender essay that explores the complex feelings around aging and the death of her father as a way to help her find “a new place amongst the loss.” These images were also a comfort to me as they so gently embraced the sadness that can arise during the very universal changes that mid-life can bring to us all. ”

Sarah Leen
Founder & Editor, Visual Thinking Collective

Some say my dad's death was the spark that ignited my depression, but this feeling has been brewing for a while.  I started to notice a sadness creep in a few years into my 40s. I searched “depression in women” and stumbled across articles stating women are the most depressed at age 44. I was at that very moment 44.

Loss during this time in a woman’s life can weigh heavily. Children are getting older and need the comfort of a parent less; the health of one’s own parent(s) is starting to fail, and hormonal shifts begin.  

Using the color blue, which for hundreds of years has been associated with melancholy and sadness-these images evoke this period in my life and how it affects those around me. A mid-point, as I am stripping down, taking stock, and finding a new place amongst the loss.

Blue is the third monograph and second self-published book of Heather Evans Smith.

This publication is made possible in part by the 2022 CENTER Me&Eve Grant.

Self-Published September 2022
Hardcover, 8x10 inches
80 pages / 31 color images
Printed and bound at Conveyor Studios
979-8-218-00666-2 
First Edition of 300 SOLD OUT
Second Edition of 200 now available.

$50 USD