Speaking Volumes- The Detroit Public Library

Speaking Volumes- The Detroit Public Library, 2015- I am opening the book, Leaves of Grass, and exposing the pages over my face, on film. By using Walt Whitman, the great American poet, I am metaphorically opening the book on the great American library. The changing, fading, uncertain role of the American library in modern society is represented in the photographs by the use of complex exposures in which part of the picture dissolves. I use only film, only an analog process, without the use of computers, to transform my observations into objects, into photographic contact prints made in the darkroom. They become a new source of reference material, documenting social history in the making. The contact prints are apart from digital files, they exist as objects, much like books.