When I first saw Library of Dust, I thought it was interesting in that it echoed David Maisel's Black Maps project which consisted of aerial photographs. Library of Dust felt like the micro to the macro of Black Maps.
If you've read Andrew Blum's article in the last Snippets, you might recall the reference to Jorge Luis Borges' short story On Exactitude in Science which tells of an empire so fixated on cartography that they created a map of its domain on a 1:1 scale. That story and the linkage between representation and scale were the thoughts that went through my mind on first observation of Library of Dust.
And then a revelation: I read the background to the project and the images became even more profound. For those who wish to share the approach which I took, I'll spare spoiling the experience. What I can say is that comparisons of the perspectives of being with and without particular knowledge was interesting in itself.
Library of Dust will be published as a monograph by Chronicle Books, with a fall 2008 release. In addition, Library of Dust will be featured in an exhibition opening this month at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
Links:
David Maisel
Chronicle Books
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
* images posted with the kind permission of David Maisel
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