Shelf Portrait – A Disappearing Archive

I gave away my collection of 1,670 books, which were hung on racks in the Red Head Gallery in Toronto. Each book had a label which said, “This book is a gift to you from Robin Pacific”. The books were catalogued and the catalogues were hung around the perimeter of the gallery. Five hundred people attended the opening. They were given shopping bags, asked to write their name on the catalogue beside the books they took, and to take a photograph using disposable cameras. When the books had all “disappeared” (it took less than a week) I hung the photographs on the racks. These photographs and the signed catalogues became the “archive of the archive”, the trace of the library I collected over thirty years. 2007.