A baby’s first year is filled with an endless stream of new experiences, contributing profoundly to their physical, mental, and emotional development. Typically at the age of one-year an infant has the motor skills and ability to sit on their own for the first time and their uninhibited gaze provides a window into a distinct personality that will endure throughout their lifetime. It is these individual natures that photographer Edward Mapplethorpe expertly captures.

The culmination of a twenty-year project by one of today’s top-commissioned and internationally-recognized photographers of baby portraits,ONEfeatures a series of 60 photographs that catch the fleeting, yet universal, moment of life when a child reaches one year of age. There is something remarkable in the innocent faces of the children portrayed in this book that serves to underscore our common humanity.

The luxuriously printed duotone photographs inONEare accompanied by essays from esteemed contemporary authors Adam Gopnik, Susan Orlean, Francine Prose, and Andrew Solomon. Patti Smith contributes an original poem while Dr. Samantha Boardman writes the introduction. Contributions from such diverse luminaries emphasize the widespread appeal such innocent, unguarded beauty has for so many people.