Tim Graveson

I consider my work conceptual photography with a performance aspect. For several years I have been placing books in certain environments and then photographing them. Often the environment is “natural.” The session begins when I place a book in a specific location: in the forest, on a beach, beside or in a freshwater creek or waterfall. The process also transforms the books: I often submerge them in water, or allow wind and weather to alter the pages; I have even burned books in a consciously staged alchemical process. I also work in urban environments: cityscapes, certain rooms; but always the books are displaced from their normal setting.

I consider the book a symbol of human knowledge: a container that is greater than any single individual book. The book — as a symbolic object — transcends whatever text it contains. It has the power to transform the landscape or cityscape in which I have placed it. By placing the book in a landscape there is reference to the human-made in juxtaposition to nature. People bring their own stories to my images of books in their various settings. I have been told many such stories.

Most of the books in my photographs are from an encyclopedia set too out-of-date to be useful, too recent to be an antique. These volumes would just end up in landfill. Other books are already damaged. I keep and reuse most of the books many times. You could say I’ve given them a new life as images.