The first major monograph by American photographer Nydia Blas, Love, You Came From Greatness is an exploration of one Black family and its community across many generations in upstate New York, as well as a formally rigorous examination of the taxonomy and syntax of family portraiture.

The book’s cover combines dramatic gold paper silkscreened in red with cloth printed in a floral pattern created from scans of actual garments that recur in Blas’ images.

Contemporary works are integrated with selections from Blas’ historical family albums to tell an extended intergenerational story and bring forward the evolving and recurring nature of the portrait photograph throughout the medium’s history.

Deploying doubling, repetition and more subtle echoing and mirroring, Love, You Came from Greatness builds a powerful line of feeling and thought across generations and photographic tropes and styles.

The book is sewn and with a rose-colored thread, and front and back matter is offset from the rest of its contents with gold ink printed on a thin cream paper stock.