I first met Maya Meissner in 2019, during portfolio reviews at the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago. It turned out to be anything but a typical meeting. Meissner has a story for me and plans to create a book that tells this story in every photographic medium imaginable, like a visual diary. A very personal and raw visual diary.

Meissner tells a dark story about him and his family narrowly escaping a serial killer in the late 1990s—The Yosemite Killer. I was captivated. I can’t wait for this true-crime scrapbook to come to life. This year, he released it—a strange and intimate collection that he named after The Cedar Lodge.

The best part about this book? it only photos, then a small insert at the end of all the words you need to know to understand Meissner’s historic incident. The photography and design are so awesome, anyone can tell this isn’t your normal collection of photos – it’s definitely a documentary of something personal and sinister.

In 1999, Cedar Lodge handyman Cary Stayner killed a woman and two children at a motel near Yosemite National Park (authorities later found another female victim). Months before this horrific crime, Maya and her parents and sister were guests at Cedar Lodge where, in the middle of the night, a man tried to break into their hotel room. His father shouted at the intruder and scared him.

Meissner and her sister were kept in the dark about this near-fatal night until her mother finally revealed the family secret to her in 2014. Since then, she has been collecting articles and archival film captured by her parents from the 1999 trip. He also captured the original photograph of the present-day scenes of Yosemite, the chilling forest surrounding the crime scene.

More than 10 years ago, Meissner’s The Cedar Lodge serves as a visual compendium of that work, its images and design carefully considered to be sensitive to the victims and their surviving families.

Meissner’s dedication at the beginning of the book says it all: “For my mom for sharing her demons with me and bravely allowing me to share them with the world. For my dad, for being our protector and encouraging my adventures . For my sister, because I’m by my side through it all. And most of all, for Carole, Juli, and Joie.” —Anna Goldwater Alexander