Agata Grzybowska on collaborating with Chloé Zhao and Jessie Buckley to make a photobook companion for Hamnet

Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s Women’s Fiction Prize-winning novel of the same name, focuses on the story of a mother’s grief. The tale transports you to 1580s Warwickshire, habited by playwright William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley), and three children – one of whom, Hamnet, passes away – a real-life event that is thought to have driven one of the writer’s most famous works, Hamlet. It was during the process of telling this tale of tragedy, grief, and loss, that the idea of creating a standalone photobook – Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream – formed in Zhao’s mind, a project which ended up involving lead the film’s lead actor, Jessie Buckley, and the photographer Agata Grzybowska.

Dreams and dreaming are the foundation of the book. During filming, Jessie would begin her days feverishly writing – continuing on from her dreams in hurried scribbles. Serendipitously, Zhao’s creative practice also looks to dream work (she cites being inspired by the work of the psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Jung) and it was this shared interest in the dream world that lead the pair to the idea of bringing these practices together.

Agata was commissioned by Chloé to realise these imaginative fixations visually. “She wanted me to photograph the unseen, the unconscious, and this is something I am also very dedicated to,” says Agata. Soon the book began to come into vision, combining Agata’s photographs with Jessie’s writings, with Agata bringing on curator Łukasz Rusznica to aid the process too. New stories formed, footed in both the real and the imagined.

Agata is primarily a documentary photographer who developed their career photographing the Syrian War, Egyptian crisis, and Ukrainian Euromaidan. Their work has taken them across different cultures and ideas, “depicting individuals in difficult, often life threatening situations”, says Agata, whose guiding principle has always been to “get as close to people and their stories”.

Drawing on this background, it became clear that the book would not shape up to be a straight forward accompaniment to the film, but as a separate entity with it’s own voice. The images freeze scenes of exhaustion, tenderness and quiet moments of contemplation, resulting in snapshots of bubbling turmoil backdropped by a wild, bucolic scenery. One of the most tender shots is one filled with creased bedsheets. Only at the top of the composition do you see the belly of a pregnant Agnes – the beginning of Hamnet’s tragic story.

Agata’s work comes across anthropological, like a study of the human condition through the characters of William and Agnes – through dramatised scenes, these real figures are captured like animals in the wild. The lives behind the page are brought out into centre stage but it’s Agnes who remains central to many of the images, amplifying the pain of maternal loss.

Nothing about the project is conventional, from the photography to the book’s structure and place in the cinematic ecosystem. As well as serving as another layer for the story to live, the book is an exercise in approaching classic stories with our own sensitivities – “and this is what I would love to encourage every single person who reaches for it to do”, ends Agata.

Hamnet will be released in cinemas across the UK on 9 January and Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream is now available from Mack.