Rare Book Series

ARTIST’S STATEMENT – RARE BOOK SERIES
In the field of photography, my work centres primarily on the art of portraiture. I’m interested in capturing the experience of living—the physical evidence and presence of life—on the faces of my subjects.

I discovered that I could explore these same themes by taking portraits of rare and antiquated books. Because of personal inscriptions, weathered paper, fine bindings, and well-thumbed pages, books, like faces, display evidence of the passage of time.

Books, it may sometimes seem, are also artifacts of another time. It is books, however, that preserve and communicate our most enduring stories and knowledge. My work depicts the book as an irreplaceable art form that contains, preserves, and communicates the thoughts and artistic strivings of humanity.

M. Michel Brisebois, chief curator of the National Library of Canada’s Rare Books Division, mounted a show of my Rare Book Series in November 2003. The Library and Archives of Canada subsequently purchased the 1st edition print of the entire series.

All of my photography is hand printed on archival fibre based paper, bleached, and then toned for preservation purposes.