Portraits Of Library Books (2013) by Meng-Tang Chuang

Meng-Tang Chuang (Dawn Chuang) was an artist from Taipei, Taiwan. She currently live in London, studying MA Book Arts (Visual Arts) in Camberwell College of Arts. Her works are based on illustration and photography. In this series of photography, I’m exploring the definition of the books. In the library, people are always searching the books from reading the backbones of the books. The backbones (the covers and the titles) become the identities of the books just as the faces and the names to human. In here, I am trying to rebuild the library by putting the books inside out, reading the colours and the traces on the surface of the pages instead.

Dawn Chuang的作品中,記憶與身分是背後影響藝術家很深的兩大主題,而材質則是她非常感興趣的媒介,例如雜誌,書本與廣告是她經常運用的材料。或許是因為身處於一個大量媒體生產的現代社會之中,她認為它們正在嘗試取代我們某種面向的記憶與身分。 在這一系列的攝影作品,藝術家嘗試探討書本的本質是什麼。她發覺在圖書館中,人們利用書架上一本本書脊的資訊來尋找自己想要的書本。書脊儼然變成一種書本變相的身分表彰,讓我想起了人類的臉龐與姓名。這樣的想法促使我想要重組一座圖書館,把所有的書本都反過來擺放,看見的不再是熟悉的文字資訊,而是積年累月的翻閱痕跡。