Sixteen years ago I started making images of books placed in environments for a collaborative installation called “The Last Library.” At the time several forces seemed to threaten books, not just a single book, but whole libraries and collections of books. The Internet was just taking off and the idea was to digitize books to make them available over a network or online. Libraries were tossing out their card catalogues; people feared that in the near future physical books would be completely replaced by the digital e-book.

There is a performance aspect to this work, as each photography session begins when I place the book in a specific location, at a beach, on top of a boulder, beside or in a freshwater creek. Working this way also transforms the books by submerging them in water, or allowing wind and weather to alter the pages; I have even burned books in a consciously staged alchemical process.

The landscape as a photographic image can be interesting but I think it can be too easily dismissed as “just another landscape.” By interjecting the book into a landscape there is a reference to the human-made in juxtaposition to nature. Another concept I had was the book representing “the law of the land,” and the idea that the right to be there, on the land is controlled by “the book.”

Recent images are in collaboration with my wife, Zea Morvitz she has worked with me to place her note books in the environments of our travels.

Some of the books in my photographs are from an encyclopedia set too out-of-date to be useful, too recent to be an antique. These volumes would just end up in landfill. Other books are already damaged. And I keep and reuse most of them many times.

You could say I’ve given them a new life as images.

I print my images on acid free paper using Epson’s Ultrachrome mineral-based inks.

Tim
March 18, 2012