TITLE: The Library

The Library started 12 years ago with a visit to a friend who amassed an enormous amount of volumes in an old mill in New England, a surreal place that felt like an abandoned cathedral or an archaeological dig. I saw its owner as one of those Irish monks who dedicated their lives to saving Western Civilization after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Garden of Eden, Alice in Wonderland, and the paintings of Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux all came to mind. Hence the nudes.

From the beginning, I aimed at a type of mystery (Borges refers to it as “magical ambiguity) where the viewer is invited to complete the image. The ideas of the labyrinth as a symbol for being lost in life and also as a structure deliberately built in order to confuse us, fascinated me. Time (frozen with every click of my shutter release button) and blindness became enhancers of reality.

The initial location turned into many others. While working on the project I questioned the validity of my pursuit. I thought of the deceiving absurdity of his travels and his passion for collecting books – both enhanced after he became blind. The point is to follow your obsessions, no matter how peculiar they seem in the beginning. Paraphrasing Mallarme, I could say that the world exists so that we may create works of art.

I thought of the fragility of beauty, at the audacity of the Body confronting Time. I thought that in order to read all the volumes in the Library, one would have to be immortal. I looked at my own library and felt sad because I realized that all those books will outlive me. Maybe I too inadvertently turned into a monk trying to foolishly save Beauty and Knowledge.

AUTHOR: Florin Firimita (United States)