Alexandra Huddleston

East or West: A Walking Journey Along Shikoku’s 88 Temple Pilgrimage is an abridged diary, an account of a mystical journey, and a photographic poem in the form of a book.  The images are studies in luminous detail, reflecting the loneliness, quiet intensity, and grace that all true spiritual seekers come to know.

In September 2010 (a few days before her thirty-third birthday), the photographer Alexandra Huddleston set out on an 800-mile walk around the island of Shikoku, Japan. To complete the Shikoku Ohenro trail pilgrims worship at 88 temples on the island, following a route that loosely traces the life and legends of the Buddhist saint Kōbō Daishi.  In the course of her journey, from time to time, the material world unexpectedly gave way to a voyage of mystical transformation.  This is the story of East or West.

This photographic book in English and French by Alexandra Huddleston tells a story of discovery: exploring a rich and beautiful African intellectual culture, that of the ancient manuscript libraries of Timbuktu and the culture of scholarship that created them.

Timbuktu, at the edge of the vast Sahara Desert, was little known in the West–except as a byword for the remote and exotic–until militant Islamist groups destroyed many of its religious shrines and ancient manuscripts in 2012.  This hauntingly beautiful book captures a way of life and learning as it was shortly before the militants overran the city.   These photographs depict a moment in time now almost gone, fading into history.  They show a culture of moderate Islam that is under threat–a deeply rooted, ancient Islamic tradition of tolerance, erudition, and faith–and a city that has built its very identity around scholarship and a love of books and learning.

more about the book

Lost Things is a beautiful little artists’ book that intends to break the heart of its reader in five photos and three poems.

more about the book

The Kyoudai Press imprint was originally founded as a collaborative exploration of the reverberations between poetry and photography. With our newly launched Literatura de Cordel / String Literature series, we return to our roots and our mission to create beauty, not to etherize the mind, but rather as the strongest weapon in our battle against apathy, conformity, ignorance, and shallow thinking.

With photography by Alexandra Huddleston and poetry by Robert Huddleston, Amor Fati launches this new chapbook series that is based on Brazil’s popular folk poetry tradition of the literatura de cordel, or string literature. In northeast Brazil, poets and artists sell inexpensive, handmade chapbooks at fairs and markets. The covers are decorated with woodblock prints and the books are displayed suspended from strings. We have changed the form slightly to suit our media and aesthetic, but our literatura de cordel preserves the brevity, liveliness, and accessibility of the tradition.