Sorted Books: Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book
Indian History for Young Folks, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
“Sorted Books” is my longest ongoing project. It began in 1993 and has taken place on many different sites over the years, including in the private homes of friends, in rare book libraries, and in the archives of important literary figures. The process is the same in every case: I sort through a collection of books, make note of particular titles, and eventually group the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence. The final results are most often shown as photographs of the book clusters, but on occasion, I exhibit the grouped books themselves. Taken as a whole, the clusters are a cross-section of that library's holdings that function as a kind of portrait.
In 2010, the Delaware Art Museum invited me to work with the books in the M. G. Sawyer Collection of Decorative Bindings. The collection comprises over 2,000 books, acquired on the basis of their cover design. It was an opportunity to take a close look at the culture and history of the United States approximately between 1870 and 1920. Fiction was dominated by themes of travel, romance, science, the automobile, rural American farm life, and the West. The Old World also hovers around the popular imagination in the many books about knights, kings, and European history. A visual and linguistic shift takes place between prim Victorian bindings and the racy dustjackets of books thirty years later. Spectacularly gilded covers reflect the wealth of the United States during certain periods, and austere designs take over during times of belt-tightening. I noticed a curious surge in late 19th-century fiction romanticizing Native Americans and despaired when I realized how this coincided with their displacement and genocide.
I came to know the books in this collection intimately through several visits to the museum but also by working remotely with their online database of the book covers. I printed out about 700 small-scale copies and spent months arranging them in my studio before coming to the museum to finalize the groupings. This sorting yielded more book clusters than any other, but it was an agonizing last day, and it felt impossible to stop when there was always one more book that begged for inclusion. For the first time, I made a “Sorted Books” project with the book covers up, in part because the titles didn’t always appear on the spines, but also because the covers were rich with information and so beautiful that I couldn’t imagine otherwise.
In the exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum that followed, we displayed a combination of photographs of the books as well as actual books inside tabletop vitrines.
A Captured Santa Claus, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Amateurs at War, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
An Unsocial Socialist, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Behold the West Indies, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 26 inches.
Captain Courtesy, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Cupid's Understudy, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 26 inches.
Friendship, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Hope and Have, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 15 inches.
If Youth but Knew, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Mr Sweet Potatoes, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
My Pets, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 15 inches.
Northern Lights, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Phantom Wires, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Queen of the Air, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Somewhere in France, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Sophy of Kravonia, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
Strange Stories of the Revolution, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.
The Gentle Reader, from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Quest of the Perfect Book, 2012, from the project “Sorted Books,” 1993 and ongoing. Digital chromogenic prints, 12.5 × 19 inches.