Landscape photographer Karen Duncan Pape turns her lens to the page in “De-Circulated,” an exhibition of reconstructed covers of banned books on display at McGuffey Art Center through January 28.
“Growing up in Southwest Virginia, books were extremely important to me, as they exposed me to other worlds and broadened my perspective,” says Pape. “I was shocked to find that books I had read in AP English many years ago were being banned in America today, and I was upset that young people might lose access to literary tools that might help them develop critical and inquiring minds, or that might support them in their quest for self-understanding.”
Pape began checking out banned books from libraries and taking multiple exposure photographs of the covers, which she blended in post-processing to create new designs. Books like Lola at the Library, banned in Pennsylvania, The Hate U Give, and The Bluest Eye, both banned in multiple states, are refracted and reimagined into colorful new forms. The abstract photographs obliterate or obstruct the text—a reminder from Pape of the power of the written word, and what is lost when it’s eliminated.
Mystery vibes
Karen Duncan Pape: “‘Relativity’ ( above left) is taken from a book cover about Albert Einstein, all of whose work was burned in 1933 in Nazi Germany, simply because he was Jewish. The book cover itself is simple and sort of boring, gold and black, with a photograph of Einstein. As I was working on the piece, I thought about the mystery of Einstein’s work. He said ‘The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.’ The resulting blue piece speaks, I hope, of Einstein’s sense of mystery, and of something which we cannot see but can only sense.
“‘Why We Can’t Wait’ by Martin Luther King, Jr. is another piece that brings me joy. This book was banned in South Africa at the height of apartheid. The image, with its elevating verticals and large WE, implies Dr. King’s idea that, now just as when he wrote this book, WE cannot wait, and WE together are responsible for moving humanity forward into a more balanced, peaceful, and loving state.”