Mickey Smith

As much as I love book cover design, there is nothing like a beautiful cloth-bound hardcover. My Updikes are all hardcovers in different color cloth and I love seeing them lined-up together. These photographs by Mickey Smith are a reminder of how aesthetically pleasing the simple combination of a good color and a bit of texture can be.

Mickey says of her work:

Volume documents bound periodicals and journals in public libraries. Most of these publications are being replaced by their online counterparts. Several titles photographed in the process of this project have been destroyed. Searching endless rows of utilitarian text, I am struck by the physical mass of knowledge and the tenuousness of printed work as it fades from public consciousness.

The act of hunting for and photographing these objects is fundamental to my process. I do not touch, light or manipulate the books and words—preferring to document them as found in the stacks, created by the librarian and positioned by the last unknown reader. I focus on simple, provocative titles that transcend the spines on which they appear to create conceptual, language-based, anthropological works.

Recent works in this series are multiple panel installations, called Collocations. Collocation is defined as "the act or result of placing or arranging together, specifically: a noticeable arrangement or conjoining of linguistic elements (as words)."

Order prints of these photos at 20x200, and find out more about Mickey by CLICKING HERE.


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