Book artists have a thing for libraries. We love books. Period. Photographers love libraries too. Rows of colored spines, amazing and beautiful architectural gems, multiples of scale – all make great subjects for photography.
I mentioned Robert Dawson in a recent blog post and, when I was searching for links to his The Great Central Valley and Farewell Promised Land projects, I found that he is on a summer-long photography trip with his son, Walker. (I never asked Bob, but I wonder if he’s named after Walker Evans?)
Bob and Walker’s project is called “An American Commons: Photographing Public Libraries Across America” and, while I’m sure we’ll all want copies of the final book that comes out of this project, we can get a sneak peek now by reading the blog, Library Road Trip.
I spent quite a lot of time wandering through the blog and I am reminded how much I enjoy Bob’s photography and how much I need to go on a road trip. The blog is also very interesting because Bob and Walker have included historical, cultural and political influences relating to the libraries they are photographing. I’m looking forward to spending more time reading the details.
Do you have an ongoing photography or other project that you’re working on? Feel free to share in the comments.
~Ginger
Midnight Musings 
Nice post Ginger. I have been enjoying your blog for quite awhile. A road trip sounds so nice. What is your fantasy road trip? If you could go anywhere and see anything?
I have been working on a photo project for about a year. It started as a desire to make a pinhole camera that would take photos in the Zymoglyphic Museum. I made the camera from an altoids tin, it takes 127 film. I have to cut the film down from 120 format to get the film I want. The photography part went pretty quickly – months. But the next step is to make several books. For a low-cost (sort of) edition, I have tried Blurb and Lulu, and was disappointed in both for different reasons. Now I’m struggling with what format to use for a one-of-a-kind book. In the middle of this we got a nice printer, I have had to learn a lot about the settings. And I dabbled in contact printing in the darkroom, thinking I might make digital negatives and then print the photos by hand. A part of the project is now on my web site. Because I can’t always get in the studio often, I sometimes loose my momentum and have to “start up” again. I’ll be so glad when it’s done.