Libraries

Candida Hofer's photographs of Libraries "are sober and restrained – the atmosphere is disturbed by neither visitors nor users, especially as she forgoes any staging of the locations. The emptiness is imbued with substance by a subtle attention to colour, and the prevailing silence instilled with a metaphysical quality that gives voice to the objects, over and above the eloquence of the furnishings or the pathos of the architecture." The book also has an introduction by Umberto Eco who provides a "witty reflection on the role of libraries in all our lives."

Beautiful as they are libraries are nothing without people using them, and people are the one element missing from these photographs.
www.thameshudson.co.uk/books/Candida_Hofer/9780500543146.mxs/27/0/