The Brooklyn-based photographer Emily Raw sent us this delightfully carnivorous portrait of Stephanie Anderson, a writer and the manager of Word bookstore, in Greenpoint. Emily writes:
Stephanie’s tumblr handle is Bookavore, so for her picture we made it literal. The set and the skirt I built from her discarded piles of publishers’ proofs—no digital manipulation was involved. The “book blood” was squid ink, not particularly tasty in its pure form. Stephanie was a trooper!
On a road trip, I can never find time for books. Instead, I end up reading street signs and atlases, menus in greasy diners, or historical markers at strange, abandoned roadside attractions where I stop to stretch my legs. A few weeks ago, I traced counterclockwise circle inside Wyoming’s decidedly square shape. In Sweetwater Station, a sign offers “Old Books, Fresh Eggs For Sale.” The store is called Mad Dog and the Pilgrim, and it sits at the edge of grassy plains, down a rocky driveway. The book barn delivers on the promise with well-arranged shelves and piles. We pick up Robert Halmi’s “Guide To Photographing Women” (1956) and Isabel Shirley’s “How to Pose for the Camera” (1965), and, for good measure, Ian Frazier’s “On The Rez.” Back to the car; there’s no room for eggs.
(To hear the story of Mad Dog and the Pilgrim, and the two women behind the operation, check out this profile from Wyoming Public Radio.)
Great images of books from around the world and the Web.
Chris Arnade sent us this great shot, of Pinters Hebrew bookstore, in Brooklyn.
“Flimsy Tables,” by Chris Arnade.
Have you taken a photograph of books worth a thousand words? E-mail us with caption and credit information.
We were saddened by the news today that the cartoonist Harvey Pekar has died at the age of seventy. Last year, to celebrate Pekar’s birthday, a group of artists who were collaborating with him on his ongoing Webcomic series on SMITH Magazine, “Pekar Project,” now regrettably cut short, invited artists to submit portraits of Pekar for a “gift” they called “The Harvey Heads.” They received around one hundred entries, including the one above, by Ben Templesmith. You can view the others on the site, and peruse the final works of one of the greatest cartoonists of all time.
“Harvey Pekar,” by Ben Templesmith.
The Book Bench is closed next week. We thought we’d leave you with this perfectly patriotic image, by the artist Paul Octavious, who found a unique way to answer that age-old question, How should books be organized? Popular solutions include by author, by genure, by color, and (a personal favorite) by whichever way prevents a teetering stack from falling. Octavious, a Chicago-based designer and photographer, takes a different approach: sculpture.
Octavious began his project, called “The Stacks,” in 2009, when he realized that his habit of buying old books in thrift shops had gotten out of hand. He’d acquired so many that they lay around his house in unruly piles. “One day I stacked them by color and it all started from there,” he told me in an e-mail last week. He started his charming book sculptures with the number nine, and he’s been making them ever since. Some of the pieces, like “Eight,” are pleasantly plump, while others, like “Forty-two,” are feats of balance. Octavious, whose last name appropriately conjures a numerical superhero, plans to keep “The Stacks” going. And it doesn’t look like he’ll run out of books anytime soon.
(Prints are available on Octavious’s Web site.)
(via swissmiss)
