untitled 2 paperbacks by Mary Ellen Bartley

I, like everyone at HHS! HQ, am a lover of the book, so I was excited (beyond words!) to see a submission from contender Mary Ellen Bartley, whose paperbacks series challenges us not to judge a book by the cover, the title, or the spine. Bartley stacks books in towers and rows, exposing us to pages available in myriad shades of white, and asks us to consider the book-as-object, and that object as emotional, even without knowing its interior contents.

She writes,

I'm exploring the possibility of creating beautiful even emotionally moving images by photographing mundane things in a purely formal way, investigating their visual qualities and relationships without assigning them much meaning or significance. The palette I discovered in the stacks, containing chalky Necco wafer pastels, fog grays and tooth colored whites, creates a calm meditative atmosphere. The quiet colors and the deliberate exclusion of clues to the books' contents serve to mute the narratives, information and ideas the books must contain - implying that the act of simply looking can be enough in a photograph.

Mickey Smith, a 2007 Winter Hot Shot and 20x200 artist, first brought us work from the stacks with her project Volume. She, like Bartley, pays heed to repetition, line, and mass, but also celebrates the Pantone-palette of color one can find in the library with works like Word Study and More Books. Bartley's books suggest a quieter relationship to her library, and I can imagine her stacking books one-by-one, rearranging their white-ness until they look just right. Perhaps it is true in this instance, that what's on the outside is more important, than what is on the inside.

Also! If you haven't yet heard, the deadline for HHS! has been extended to next Tuesday, May 5th @ 11 p.m.. Apply here!