Photo artist Cara Barer experiments with curling irons, clothes pins and water to transform discarded books into coiled, crumpled objects of beauty. She says her photographs “are primarily a documentation of a physical evolution . . . The way we choose to research and find information is also in an evolution.”
“Barer visually documents the way in which society has come to retrieve information by changing a common reference book into a work of sculpture and photographing the outcome.” -Exhibition notes from Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto
More of Cara Barer’s work on the Bau-Xi Photo website, here.
Cara Barer’s website, here.
A biography of the artist, here.
Categories: Books, Photography
Canadian Art Junkie 
Evocative. By the way, I was a librarian for a good part of my career. ..but became increasingly electronic.
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I didn’t know the librarian background. Cool. But I know what you mean about the electronic dominance.
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Gorgeous work!
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Thanks for visiting. Finally got time to browse your blog. Love the Claire-Chair piece.
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Cara’s creations and photographs are a kaleidoscope of color and beauty. My eyes are happy! Thank you for sharing this, Boomer!
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Happy eyes are always good!
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I had no idea this is what I would find when I opened your post. How amazing! Again thank you for introducing me to the unique.
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You’re always welcome. I had never seen works like this either.
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just noticed in her yellow pages cara highlighted a few page headers
& a couple of them read:
p.66 ART-ARTISTS
p.130 BOILERS-BOOKBINDERS
!!
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Got it, good spotting. Thanks.
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my parents had a well loved dictionary that looked
almost as alive as Cara’s white pages!
the lighting for each shot is just as important as the image.
for me it’s the lighting that gives them the feel of sea creatures.
the ones that can be found leagues deep in the sea!
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Our house had a dictionary like that, too. Know what you mean. Good point about the lighting.
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What a novel idea! 😉
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Exactly, and her experiments get more and more interesting as she goes along.
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So creative and so beautiful.
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I agree with the beautiful part especially. Hard to imagine they’re books.
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Absolutely love the creativity here. I like the second and third picture the best. I love when artists really go outside the box and experiment with things that would otherwise be thrown away. Great post!
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The origins of creativity like this are always fascinating. She says this all started when she had an “encounter” with a discarded Houston telephone book on a street.
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What a creative mind!
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I gotta pass this on to our Special Collections librarian here on campus – he teaches book arts! Lovely stuff.
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Great idea. She uses mostly reference books and says cheekily on her website that “No important books have been injured during the making of any of these photographs.”
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