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These are a series of photographs of books I saw at the architecture and art museums in Rotterdam. I have a habit of collecting photographs of libraries, of books which I would have liked to read. Many a times, I click them because I find their titles very interesting - as windows to worlds that people have already begun to think about. Sometimes, while browsing over my trails, I skim through the content, which too seems promising. However, many of these eventually appear to be nascent inquiries put together through conversations, dialogues, preliminary observations rather than deep inquiries, long reflections or in-depth analysis. Yet, there is a promise of the question, and that is what is captivating.
Often, I think I must sit and read these books, but I know that so many of them could just be impressionistic upon the question and may not satisfy my quest. Perhaps this is the impulse of the publishing industry in the west. Firstly, the book is an artistic object - beautifully designed, carefully edited and graphically concise. It makes its statement in its sheer design - the impactful coverpage, the layout of text, the choice of fonts, the quality of paper, the size - everything so carefully orchestrated so as to create seduction for it. Then the content - speaking in the language of the contemporary, creating urgency, posing the argument, speaking sharply with history. The content is laid out fairly methodically and pursued with rigour. And lastly, its accessibility - in museums, institutions, digital platforms, online copies and so on. This kind of ecology around the book creates value around the medium of both - circulation of knowledge and publishing.
I used to take similar pictures of books when I used to work as an assistant at the Yale libraries. Exhaustingly - wondering that someone had already thought of so many things, that so many worlds are already documented, and we do not know anything about them, given that these books like in the innermost cores of large vertical stacks of these humungous libraries that readers hardly (may/can/wish to) enter. We all place hold on books through online library systems. But I would enjoy the serendipity of find worlds when moving through reams of books sitting quietly on stacks one besides the other. Every time I used to pull out a book for a patron at Yale, I would look one whole shelf left and right, or sometimes, skimming through titles and Dewey numbers to find the right one. It slowed me down (like some others who perhaps indulged like me), concerning our library manager. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of those pictures in 2019 when my hard drive was stolen over a train journey.
My heart aches. Despite not having access to the physical books, the hope lay in the windows they opened through the titles...Those which could perhaps trigger or inspire inquiries that I arrive at some point of time in life, or those that become meaningful to me some time later, or even if these titles could some day help another fellow researcher thinking around similar lines. A chunk of those fragmented photo-indexes has gone, but the habit has not. I continue to take pictures of people's libraries and rejoice in the various ways in which the world has been narrated. These constellations of books, like those of the sky, are astrological configurations of hope through which thinkers indulge in futures. It is through these that we continue to build our ideal worlds.
