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Deirdre Donohue's Photobookcases

By Peggy Roalf   Wednesday August 13, 2014

Q: What is special about your bookcases?

In 2009 we were searching for a new place in Harlem, and when I first saw the living room I had an extreme “EUREKA!” moment because there was an uninterrupted 28-foot wall, 11 feet high, with no windows! To me, it looked like the perfect place for wall-to-wall shelves to organize my art books, protecting them from direct sunlight and giving them room to breathe.

I had just been cataloging my home library, and had formed 6 boxes of duplicates and books I was no longer in love with, and so I sold those to raise the money to realize the shelves.

My friend and colleague, Scrap Wrenn, recommended her partner, JoAnna Scaramuzzo, who designed and built this amazing wall unit, which is pure and beautiful [and removable, as we are renters]. She loaded in and installed it all with a screw gun the night before the move, and so everything smelled like pine when we arrived the next morning.

 

I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to shelve the 250 or so cartons of art books onto these shelves. It brought back fond memories of shelving ICP’s library into its new home in 2001 with my friend and colleague Natalia Rand.

Q: How do you organize your photobooks?

The first couple of vertical rows are essays and theory and criticism, the next two are works on art movements and collections, then there are monographs generally by artist’s last name, but not exact because the shelves are varying heights, so they dance around alpha order a bit. After that, are books on photobooks and other publications, and then cinema and, finally, a section on New York books [with a growing Harlem section]. Not everything fits in the living room shelves.

 

Bookmaking, Japan, textiles and needlework are in my studio; cookbooks and philosophy in the kitchen; and Czech and Slovak art and history, literature, artist books, enigmatic books [mainly thrift store finds], and DVDs are in the bedroom. Cinema and New York will be moving out of the living room soon, as I need more shelf space!

Q: What was first photobook you ever bought? Why did it catch your attention.

A: I would like to say it was one of the photobooks I loved as a kid, but we were poor and were inveterate library users [my mom was a librarian and my dad was on the Board of the local library], so the Dare Wright Lonely Doll Books, and all others were signed out for a week, not bought. After I left home, I think early acquisitions were the catalog of the Avedon show at the Met, and Eisenstaedt Germany at ICP. Diana Vreeland’s book Allure was, likely, the first book I purchased that could be called a photo book according to the Parr/Badger definition.

Q: Have your shelves ever collapsed under their weight? Have you had any other serious problems with your shelves?

Unfortunately, our very old building is saggy floored and soft walled, so some tinkering had to be done to everything weight-bearing before it was secure and level, but now everything on the shelves is safe and sound, and a perpetual source of immense pleasure and discovery.

Q: What is the next photobook you plan to purchase?

Oh, the Winogrand catalog. Saw the show at the Met opening week, and must read the book. I am on austerity in order to preserve my resources until the New York Art Book Fair in the autumn.

Deirdre Donohue is the Stephanie Shuman Librarian of the International Center of Photography [ICP] and the 2014 Chair of the New York Chapter of ARLIS [The Art Librarians Society]. She is faculty of the ICP/Bard MFA Program and Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, as well as a practicing artist. She tweets @ICPLibrary and blogs sometimes for ICP Library’s blog Monsters and Madonnas and so far in 2014 has contributed essays to: Lucia Papo, an exhibition catalog published by Christian Duvernois Landscape/Gallery, and Publicaciones sobre libros fotograficos y fotografia impre sa, published by Biblioteca Publica de la UniversidadNacional de La Plataan exhibition catalog conceived of by artist, publisher and bibliophile Leandro Villaro, and published in Buenos Aires in English and Spanish. pimp bookcase
Photos: Christian Erroi


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