La bibliothèque (The Library) is a project in which I transformed books into pinhole cameras, using them to photograph small, interior views of the Bibliothèque centrale – Montréal. The book cameras were simple devices, modified with a tiny hole in the front cover for an aperature and a piece of light sensitive paper inserted inside the book for the negative. In the long (15 minute) exposures, the presence of human activity was erased, while unpredictable views of dark corners and other obscure details were recorded.
I was intregued by the photographic realm of light and shadow as seen by a book or object. The images are like tiny pinpricks in time, windows between the past and the present. Sometimes, in a mysterious kind of way, bits of text from the book-cameras themselves would appear in the margins of the images.
In December, 2004, the photographs and book-cameras were exhibited as an installation within two large cabinets at the Bibliothèque Centrale – Montréal.
At the end of the project, I returned to the various viewpoints in the library where the pictures were taken and inserted copies of the photographs into books for someone else to come across.
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