About Archival Images

Libraries, one of our key social institutions, are undergoing a quiet revolution. Once solely the domain of the analogue (printed) book, they must now also archive the digital word. Yet their plurality of purpose remains; they must both protect and preserve the information and knowledge that they contain whilst simultaneously enabling access to it. These photographs of the British Library, one of the world's largest libraries, look at this plurality by examining the institution's infrastructure. The precisely ordered plant rooms, air conditioning and data storage systems serve as metaphor for the catalogues, classification systems and shelf-marks that enable books to be found and collections used, as well as for the challenges of the digital age; the library can no more function without ordered technology than it can without ordered classification.

In his text accompanying Candida Hofer's Libraries, Umberto Eco suggests that the one of the functions of the library is 'in part to conceal books, in order to enable them to be found again'. In an echo of this apparent contradiction, photography itself can sometimes be as much about what we can't see as it is about what we can. Photography and libraries also share a direct relationship; after all, outside of the gallery and the family snapshot, we primarily encounter photography in the books and magazines that libraries subsequently collect. Through these photographs I wanted to explore this complex relationship - and hopefully reveal the institution of the library - precisely by concealing as many books as possible.