I first met Maya Meissner in 2019, during portfolio reviews at the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago. It ended up being anything but a typical meeting. Meissner had a story for me and was planning on creating a book telling this story in every photography medium imaginable, like a visual diary. A very personal and ominous visual diary.
Meissner told a dark tale about her and her family narrowly escaping a serial killer in the late 1990s—The Yosemite Killer. I was captivated. I could not wait for this true-crime scrapbook to come to life. This year, she released it—a stunning and intimate collection she named The Cedar Lodge.
The best part about this book? It’s just photographs, then a wee insert at the very end with all the words you need to know to understand Meissner’s historic incident. The photography and design is so eerie, anyone would know that this isn’t your normal collection of photographs—it’s definitely a documentary of something personal and sinister.
In 1999, the Cedar Lodge’s handyman, Cary Stayner, killed a woman and two children at the motel near Yosemite National Park (authorities later found another female victim). Months prior to this horrific crime, Maya and her parents and sister were guests at the Cedar Lodge where, in the middle of the night, a man tried to break into their hotel room. Her father yelled at the intruder and scared him off.
Meissner and her sister were kept in the dark about this almost-fateful night until her mother finally revealed the family secret to her in 2014. Since then, she’s been collecting articles and archival film her parents captured from the 1999 trip. She’s also been capturing original photography of current Yosemite landscapes, the chilling forest surrounding the crime scene.
More than 10 years later, Meissner’s The Cedar Lodge serves as a visual compendium of that work, its imagery and design carefully considered in order to be sensitive to the victims and their surviving families.
Meissner’s dedication in the beginning of the book speaks to all of them: “For my mom for sharing her demons with me and bravely letting me share them with the world. For my dad, for being our protector and encouraging my adventures. For my sister, for being by my side through it all. And most of all, for Carole, Juli, Silvina, and Joie.” —Anna Goldwater Alexander