Book Description

"THE ART OF FEAR: A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMOIR" BY KIMBERLY BUTLER Foreword by NEIL GAIMAN: "[Kimberly Butler] says I'm her muse, but all I ever do is tell her how beautiful and strange her pictures are, and how hard it is for me to get them out of my head" Photojournalist and celebrity photographer Kimberly Butler has published her first book, "The Art of Fear: A Photographic Memoir" publisher Sky Perspectives Publishingan epic poem and story of survival featuring 34 exquisite yet disturbing images - without using Photoshop -- where she faces her fears to reveal the childhood trauma she experienced when,at 8 years old, she was removed from her home and placed in Ottilie Orphanage in Jamaica, New York. The young woman posing in the photographs wearing a gas mask -a metaphor for the protective walls Butler built around her life - is her own daughter, Caitlin, whom she adopted from a Lithuanian orphanage - coincidentally - at the age of 8 years old.The locations for the photographs in this 100-page softcover book (which features a foreword by award-winning author Neil Gaiman) include a collapsed abandoned building, a deserted icy beach during winter, and an empty church and cemetery - each representing the loneliness, isolation, and fear she fought to overcome by using masks to cloak feelings of shame and worthlessness. "I wanted to share my journey to help others," says the award-winning photographer. "Those who are born into circumstances that make life even more difficult than it already is -- whether dueto dysfunctional childhoods or personal demons¿And, of course," Butler adds, "this turns out to be just about everyone to some degree or another."