This is the fifth collaboration between Lebanese photographer Hanan Kazma and American poet Richard Leach. Kazma's captures of the everyday abstractions and reflected distortions found in city streets are featured in this collection, as well as two new self-portraits. Leach's poems written in response to them range from surreal free verse to formal, metered and rhymed lines. Both Herman Melville's poem, "Art", from which the book's title is drawn, and a new poem, "On Herman Melville's 'Art'" by Leach, are included.
Kazma is an artist self-taught in several media who began a serious pursuit of photography in 2009. She lives in Beirut. Leach is a poet and visual artist in Stamford, Connecticut. His secular poetry has appeared in print in Rattle and in various online publications. His sacred poetry, words for hymns and anthems, has been set to music by many composers and is widely published and sung.