Pieta by El Greco, 1993
Book with Two Portraits, 1993
Boy with Fruit by Caravaggio, 1993
Portrait of Inghirami by Raphael, 1993
Portraits by Da Vinci, 1993
Antichita Romane #1, 1994
Book of Durer Paintings, 1994
Book of Revolving Stars, 1994
Book of Stars, 1994
Book of Silhouettes, 1994
Dictionary, 1994
Diversi Ornati Di Pomeia by Piranesi #1, 1994
Ornati de Pompeiia 2, 1994
Le Antichita Romane by Piranesi #2, 1994
Naked Maja by Goya, 1994
Stitching Book, 1994
The Coliseum by Piranesi #1, 1994
The Coliseum by Piranesi #2, 1994
Two Books, 1994
Birds of North America, 1995
Book of Astronomy, 1995
Book of Proverbs, 1995
Bust with Bookshelves, 1995
Four Old Books, 1995
Self Portrait in Book, 1995
Sunlight on Book of Landscapes, 1995
Tower of Babel by Bruegel, 1995
Two Books of Astronomy, 1996
Book and Camera, in Memory of Fox Talbot, 1999
Three Dictionaries, 2000
Three Women by Hopper, 2000
Two Books Looking at Eachother, 2000
Book Stacks in a Very Big Space, 2001
Book Damaged By Water, 2001
Book with Wavy Pages, 2001
Book with Wavy Pages, 2001
Damaged Book with Dirt, 2001
Detail Of Book Damaged By Water, 2001
English Dictionary with Hole, 2001
Fore Edged Book, 2001
Open Dictionary, 2001
Tale of Two Cities, 2001
Thought Book, 2001
Two Tall Books, 2002
Book, Mirror, and Round Table, 2000
Old Travel Scrapbook and Postcard, Southern Italy, 2000
Shiny Books, 2000
Six Dictionaries, 2000
Sunspots on Books, 2000
Travel Scrapbook Tower of Pisa, 2000
Old Photograph and Postcard, 2000
Travel Scrapbook, Munich, 2000
A Farewell to Arms, 2001
Two Stacks of Bound Newspapers, 2001
Microfilm Reader, 2001
Tiny Book with Paperclip for Scale, 2001
Books With Gold Leaf, 2007
Dictionary With Hole, 2011
Four Thumb Indexes, 2011
Gold Book Inside Dictionary, 2011
White Book Inside Dictionary, 2011
A Farewell to Arms, First and Last Pages, 2011
Intertwined Dictionaries, 2011
Last Two Pages of Ulysses, 2011
Opening Page, A Farewell To Arms, 2011
The Great Big Fire Engine Book, 2011
Van Gogh, 2011
Caravaggio Book and Lightbulb, 2013
Maja Reflection, 2014
Rock and Pieter Bruegel the Elder Book, 2019
Wood Chunk on Pieter Bruegel the Elder Book, 2019
Burnt Wood on Hieronymus Bosch Book, 2021
Books
One day in 1993 I was looking at a book of works by El Greco. As I turned a page, its surface caught light from a window at a funny angle, changing a reproduction of a painting into a shimmering distortion. What I saw wasn’t El Greco anymore, but it was a beautiful new image nonetheless. I photographed this effect and was immediately inspired to find other ways of seeing books in a new light, so to speak.
The books pictured here range from the very rare to the most common. My attraction to them has less to do with their rarity or preciousness than with my wanting to find out the stories they have to tell. Making photographs of these imagined narratives is at the heart of my work here.
One of the big pleasures of this project has come from spending a good amount of time looking at, holding, smelling, and reading a terrific number of skinny, fat, tall, pompous, modest, funny, sad, proud, injured, and radiant books. Of course, there are many more out there to be found, by anybody!
For me, the magic of these objects lies somewhere between a photograph of a book and the book itself; at times, I have been convinced that books hold all the material of life- at least the stuff that fits between an A and a Z.