Michael Ackerman’s Homesick New York is a deeply personal meditation on memory, belonging, and the enduring pull of his home town. Returning to New York City after a long absence, the artist sets out on quiet wanderings through the streets, parks, and subways of a city both familiar and transformed.

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What emerges is a body of work shaped by intuition and empathy — a series of intimate encounters with strangers with whom Ackerman shares a mysterious emotional connection. Each portrait is the result of silent recognition, shared presence, and mutual vulnerability.

Homesick New York by Michael Ackerman - Tipi bookshop

Rather than documenting the city itself, Homesick New York turns toward an inner map of longing. The artist gravitates to individuals and spaces that carry the aura of dislocation, fragility, and quiet strength. Shot on analogue film using a variety of formats and processes, the photographs are imbued with a tactile richness and temporal softness that evoke fleeting memories — as though we are catching glimpses of something beloved that is already fading away. Diptychs, triptychs, and subtle sequences add rhythm to the narrative, revealing layers of meaning and emotion that unfold slowly, like a dream half remembered.

Homesick New York by Michael Ackerman - Tipi bookshop

A distinct element of the book lies in its use of test strips — photographic leftovers from the printing process, left soaking for weeks in chemical solutions. Once dried, they bear marks of decay and transformation, ghostly echoes of the original image. In the book, reproductions of these spectral fragments are woven like relics of a memory in flux — imperfect, beautiful, and haunting — and each is carefully torn and glued in by hand after the printing process. In one of the collector’s editions, an original, signed strip is also included as an additional piece.

This book is not a document of New York, but a love letter to the people who shape it — and to the fleeting, unrepeatable intimacies that emerge when we open ourselves to strangers. It is an embrace of human mystery, of imperfection, and of beauty that resists explanation. It is a reflection on loss and rediscovery, guided by a simple, urgent desire: to connect, to care, to see — and to be seen.

In the book, reproductions of these spectral fragments are woven like relics of a memory in flux — imperfect, beautiful, and haunting — and each is carefully torn and glued in by hand after the printing process. In one of the collector’s editions, an original, signed strip is also included as an additional piece.

Pre-orders