You can tell so much about a person from their collection of books. Friend, potential lover, there’s nothing like having a good nose through someone’s personal belongings, and the look and feel of someone’s book collection gives you an insight into their psyche and further develops how you might see them.
Check out eFlux’s project with Martha Rosler and her library here.
You can tell so much about a person from their collection of books. Friend, potential lover, there’s nothing like having a good nose through someone’s personal belongings, and the look and feel of someone’s book collection gives you an insight into their psyche and further develops how you might see them. Spine after spine, type and cover designs span decades where their aesthetics tell you as much about the content as their titles or authors. Books that look old and well handled where you might be treated to hand-written notes in margins or a smattering of little explanation marks where the reader’s found something that excites them; maybe even a post-it note or a bus ticket used as a place holder. There’s something rather epistemological in looking upon someone’s library, where we feel we might know the truth of the collector more intimately on the basis of what they choose to surround themselves with. Yes, the phenomenology of a book collection with all its physical presence, unique character and intellectual nouse can be quite seductive to a roving mind and I don’t think looking through the contents of someone’s Kindle would have quite the same affect at all!