New Pictures for the Withdrawn series

I spent much of yesterday, making a book about my project, Withdrawn. It's a rough first version, I am trying to find a way to include 3 or 4 different types of pictures - the inscription photos, the withdrawn stamped photos themselves and various other photos that pertain to illustrations or mainly text. A book seems to be a better format for sequencing, than a portfolio presentation. But that's exactly what I'll be doing at FotoFest this month, so I'm trying to work out the kinks.

Here's my first stab at an artist statement:

Photographing withdrawn library books is one way to depict time's relentless push forward and consider the institutions that change or die as the result of cultural and technological changes. Some of these discarded books were rejected as no longer relevant to current culture, others were battered, and some were the victim of popularity - too many copies and not enough room.

The librarian's "Withdrawn" or "Discarded" stamp is like a silent slap across the face. A once loved volume is ostracized from the family home. However books have many lives and move from one house to another, carrying the marks of their former lives - inscriptions, stains, notes and other marks.

As society completes its move to a digital world, these small acts of personalization and artifacts of aging are harder to find. Though technology is often wonderful, it can also fundamentally change an important and everyday activity like reading.  Books bear the marks of time passing in a way that electronic devices cannot.

While working with these books, my head filled with stories, not the stories put forth by their authors, but the stories of the book owners. I was struck by a child's angry "impossible!" scribbled in response to the gift of a ponderous volume.  Who owned the book with a Boys Town stamp from 1963 stuck to the back cover? And what wife would toss out a book so lovingly inscribed by her husband? I will never know these answers, but because I can see the marks left behind, I can imagine my own stories.