The recent NY Art Book Fair, and week’s Fall Books issue of the magazine, had me thinking about the ways artists use books. Here’s a slide show of fourteen images, followed by a video. Read the captions for comments from the artists.
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<em><a href="http://www.carrieschneider.net/" target="_blank">Carrie Schneider</a>, “Bianca reading Sylvia Plath (Ariel, 1965),” from the series “Reading Women.”</em><br><br>“Watching another person read is an incredibly intimate experience,” Schneider told me. “There’s something powerful and rare in the intensity of concentration experienced while reading. It’s this moment I’m after: when the sitter loses awareness of the camera and seems to be transported elsewhere. ‘Reading Women’ depicts friends—mostly artists and musicians living in New York—each reading a book of her choice written by a female author, poet, musician, or artist, in her own home or studio. What initially compelled me to begin the project is mirrored in the portraits themselves: a young artist’s desire to connect with another creative voice in a way that resonates with her own art and life.”
Video: Sean Ohlenkamp’s “The Joy of Books,” 2012.
“For four long nights we moved, animated, shelved, and re-shelved books to bring Type Books to life—reminding people that there’s nothing quite like a real book,” Ohlenkamp told me.
