"The Last Book" Photographic Series

The debate between print vs. eBooks and who will survive has been going on for some time. Photographer Reinier Gerritsen believes that the print book is a "beautiful phenomenon that's vanishing".  Seeking to document the act of reading books, Gerritsen has spent 13 weeks over three years travelling the New York subway, capturing the images of people and what they are reading.  

Photo: Reinier Gerritsen as shown on theSlate.com in Behold, The Photo Blog.

Here he explores the act of reading as it occurs in public spaces the cramped and jostled environment of a subway car. It began as a series of modest observations and transformed into a collection of vivid documentary portraits, set against a visual landscape of best sellers, classics, romance novels, detective thrillers and every kind of printed book, as diverse as the readers. Conceived as an elegy to the end of bound books, in a positive twist it has now become evident that people are moving away from electronic reading devices and that the printed book is alive and well! (excerpt from the press release form the Julie Saul Gallery where Gerritsen's exhibit was on display from December 13 to Febrary 7, 2015)

 

Photo: saulgallery.com