Todd Zimmer, USA
I contacted Sarah in 2008 after talking with my sister, Brooke Koven. Brooke has been in a couple of these
shows, and I felt like riding my big sister's coattails into bookarts glory. At that time (2008), I really didn't
expect to wait nearly three years to do a bookmark. Putting this project on the back burner was hard for me.
I kept thinking about bookmarks when I had nothing better to think about.
All that thinking gave me so many great and awful ideas. One that stuck is how cool books look when the
spine doesn't show. These old books are printed on crap paper, and many publishers colored the edges.
Green, red, yellow, orange, and blue edges are common in my library. The most common though, is aged,
dusty off-white I had big dreams for this project, and the photo session was pretty chaotic. On a recent
Saturday, I stacked and piled hundreds of books in my apartment.
My hope was to show every book I owned in a big heap. This was a tribute to an industry I spent way too
much time with and money on. Things were not working, and when I went too high, the pile would fall. I
decided - at the 11th hour - to play with just paperback books. They are all roughly the same height and
width, so I thought I would just stack them like bricks. At one point I had a 6-foot tall stack of books
(I was shooting from beneath when it fell on top of me - and yes, it did hurt).
I have over 150 photos from the shoot. I compiled my favorites together. I'm mostly happy with the way
these turned out. Looking at these pictures makes me think that one day someone will do the same
thing with e-readers. (Though it wouldn't look as cool.)
www.ToddZimmer.org
Toddzimmer@gmail.com
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