In the stacks

Sometimes just looking at books you love yields great ideas when you’re thinking about a book for your own work. April Artist-in-Residence Brian Ulrich knew when he arrived that he wanted to work on a book dummy for his project Copia during his residency. Syracuse University’s Bird Library, right next door to Light Work, has a great collection of photobooks both in the stacks and in their Special Collections.

While doing some roaming in the stacks, Brian came across one of his favorites, What We Bought by Robert Adams. It’s a classic that definitely resonates with Ulrich and his work: “What We Bought was one of the first books I started thinking about when I began Copia. It’s a great example of diverse work developed over time around an idea. What Adams was seeing in Colorado at that time was all new when he made those pictures. I liked the idea of sort of bringing that trajectory of thought into the 21st Century.”

Image: Brian Ulrich, Westland Mall, 2009, from the series Copia