In our current online survey, a significant percentage of Lens Culture readers are describing themselves as "Artist using photography" rather than "Photojournalist" or "Commercial Photographer" or other description. This bit of knowledge is quite interesting to me, especially since from the start, Lens Culture has intended to explore "photography and shared territories".

In that "shared territories" light, I was recently introduced to the work of a young artist who uses photography to document her wonderful and quirky ideas, installations and "uninvited collaborations with nature". Her name is Nina Katchadourian, and her elegant website is filled with intellectual whimsy and serious explorations of charts and systems, maps, language, translation, and confusing animals.

As a poetry lover and book collector, I was particularly attracted to an ongoing project that she started in 1993, called "Sorted Books". Like many of us, she likes to study what's on the bookshelves of her friends (and in the collections of specialty libraries). After perusing the offerings, she then selects and sorts a grouping of books whose titles on their spines spell out a poem or philosophical query. The results are funny. They provide insight into the mind of the artist, and they also provide a very filtered view of the person who owns the books.

Akron Stacks from the Sorted Books project, C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001
Copyright Nina Katchadourian

So, looking up at my own bookcase, this musing came along, thanks to inspiration from Katchadourian:

What remains, sleeping by the Mississippi?, 2007, Jim Casper

What's waiting to be decoded on your bookshelf?