Description

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Delighting in the look and feel of books, conceptual artist Nina Katchadourian's playful photographic series proves that books' covers—or more specifically, their spines—can speak volumes. Over the past two decades, Katchadourian has perused libraries across the globe, selecting, stacking, and photographing groupings of two, three, four, or five books so that their titles can be read as sentences, creating whimsical narratives from the text found there. Thought-provoking, clever, and at times laugh-out-loud funny (one cluster of titles from the Akron Museum of Art's research library consists of: Primitive Art/Just Imagine/Picasso/Raised by Wolves), Sorted Books is an enthralling collection of visual poems full of wry wit and bookish smarts.

About the Author

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Nina Katchadourian is an internationally exhibited conceptual artist. She lives in New York.

Brian Dillon is an award-winning author living in Canterbury, England.

Praise For…

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"Katchadourian's project - stacking books so that their titles read as droll, poem-like phrases, then photographing the results - takes on a weight beyond its initial novelty. It's a love letter to books, book collecting and the act of reading." - San Francisco Chronicle

"Katchadourian's project - stacking books so that their titles read as droll, poem-like phrases, then photographing the results - takes on a weight beyond its initial novelty. It's a love letter to books, book collecting and the act of reading." - San Francisco Chronicle

"Katchadourian's project - stacking books so that their titles read as droll, poem-like phrases, then photographing the results - takes on a weight beyond its initial novelty. It's a love letter to books, book collecting and the act of reading." - San Francisco Chronicle

"In Sorted Books, a project started nearly 20 years ago, Nina Katchadourian reveals the new narratives books can tell when stacked and organized by the titles printed on their spines. What results are short prose-poems. Some are witty, such as, "Speaking of Pianists/Am I Too Loud?/Beethoven Lives Upstairs"; others thought-provoking, such as "Paradise/Extra Innings/After Death;" but all have a way of proving that the seemingly ordinary things around us have fascinating new possibilities." - Oprah.com

"In Sorted Books, a project started nearly 20 years ago, Nina Katchadourian reveals the new narratives books can tell when stacked and organized by the titles printed on their spines. What results are short prose-poems. Some are witty, such as, "Speaking of Pianists/Am I Too Loud?/Beethoven Lives Upstairs"; others thought-provoking, such as "Paradise/Extra Innings/After Death;" but all have a way of proving that the seemingly ordinary things around us have fascinating new possibilities." - Oprah.com

"As a longtime fan of artist Nina Katchadourian's long-running Sorted Books project I'm thrilled for the release of Sorted Books-a collection spanning nearly two decades of her witty and wise minimalist mediations on life by way of ingeniously arranged book spines.... In an era drowned in periodic death tolls for the future of the physical book, her project stands as a celebration of the spirit embedded in the magnificent materiality of the printed page." - Brain Pickings

"Katchadourian's stacks possess an understated sophistication; they are true to the intimate nature of books and yet reveal their dramatic features and unexpected potential." - Publishers Weekly

"As a longtime fan of artist Nina Katchadourian's long-running Sorted Books project I'm thrilled for the release of Sorted Books-a collection spanning nearly two decades of her witty and wise minimalist mediations on life by way of ingeniously arranged book spines.... In an era drowned in periodic death tolls for the future of the physical book, her project stands as a celebration of the spirit embedded in the magnificent materiality of the printed page." - Brain Pickings

"As a longtime fan of artist Nina Katchadourian's long-running Sorted Books project I'm thrilled for the release of Sorted Books-a collection spanning nearly two decades of her witty and wise minimalist mediations on life by way of ingeniously arranged book spines.... In an era drowned in periodic death tolls for the future of the physical book, her project stands as a celebration of the spirit embedded in the magnificent materiality of the printed page." - Brain Pickings

"Katchadourian's stacks possess an understated sophistication; they are true to the intimate nature of books and yet reveal their dramatic features and unexpected potential." - Publishers Weekly

"Katchadourian's stacks possess an understated sophistication; they are true to the intimate nature of books and yet reveal their dramatic features and unexpected potential." - Publishers Weekly

"In Sorted Books, a project started nearly 20 years ago, Nina Katchadourian reveals the new narratives books can tell when stacked and organized by the titles printed on their spines. What results are short prose-poems. Some are witty, such as, "Speaking of Pianists/Am I Too Loud?/Beethoven Lives Upstairs"; others thought-provoking, such as "Paradise/Extra Innings/After Death;" but all have a way of proving that the seemingly ordinary things around us have fascinating new possibilities." - Oprah.com