Recently, our 2025 Librarians-in-Residence te editions visited the Hardcore Art Book Fair in Mexico City, where they acquired a range of publications for our library. Below are some of the exciting titles soon to be on our shelves.

Isabel Moreno Cortez, Ángel Miguel
Published by Hydra, 2024

Ángel died on 23 January 2019, due to a complication during the 27th week of Moreno’s pregnancy. Living through his death has allowed the artist to connect with her mother and her lineage; it has given Moreno a new voice and the right to tell the story of her brother Miguel’s death, who died by suicide 23 years earlier, on 23 June 1996. Ángel Miguel is a photobook project that explores the death of children and the traces such a loss leaves on those who survive them. A loss that defies nature, confronting a lexical void. Through images and texts, a complex tapestry is revealed, sharing the intense experience of encountering two deaths that shape her life.

Kiana Hayeri, When Cages Fly
Published by Raya Editorial, 2024

When Cages Fly is an unconventional photobook born from an unconventional story, captured inside Herat Women’s Prison in Afghanistan. The story behind it, Where Prison Is a Kind of Freedom, was first published in The New York Times Magazine. It illustrates the lives of women who ended up in prison after taking drastic steps to escape abusive and violent marriages. The story won the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2020 and became the foundation for this book, which explores the fine line between freedom and captivity, both in a literal and symbolic sense.

The book is divided into three chapters and contains little text; it also comes with a separate booklet. When Cages Fly invites viewers to take part in shaping their own understanding of what they see. At the heart of the book is the middle chapter, which is sealed within a box. This chapter acts as a symbol of prison. It is both protected and strangely freeing, offering a kind of shelter for those escaping the violence of home. Viewers are encouraged to tear open the sealed box of the middle chapter to ‘gain access’ to the prison.

Miguel Covarrubias, Corrientes del Pacífico (Pacific Currents)
Published by Alias Editorial, 2022

In Corrientes del Pacífico, Miguel Covarrubias blends anthropology and caricature through a series of map-based murals created for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. Covarrubias was a caricaturist, painter, cartographer, set designer, collector, and promoter of Mexican art and modern dance. Alongside his prolific artistic production, he made valuable contributions to anthropological, ethnological, and museographic studies. Covarrubias connected drawing and painting with public imagery through works characterised by subtle humour and sharp political critique of modern society.

Elizabeth Trejo, ¿A dónde se fue el instinto? (Where Did Instinct Go?)
Published by Miau Ediciones, 2025

In this intimate and deeply reflective photobook, Elizabeth Trejo questions the mandate of motherhood from a personal and visual perspective. Through family images and photographic archives, the author weaves a story about memory, female genealogy, and the desire – or lack thereof – to be a mother.

What happens when there are no nostalgic images to preserve? What stories emerge when one decides not to mother? In a conversation between images and words, ¿A dónde se fue el instinto? becomes an exploration of identity beyond traditional boundaries, embracing the right to choose other paths without relinquishing tenderness or memory. It is a sensitive and powerful work, dedicated to the women who came before us and to those of us who journey with them, with different longings.