In a departure from the colorful still life photographs he is known for, artist Sam Falls brings together a series of black and white images for the first time in his limited-edition artist book Visible Library. With a large format camera and a few boxes of expired film, Falls spent a day making these beautiful and haunting pictures in the stacks above the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Like “walking alone in the woods,” as he refers to it, Falls created what can easily be considered his most intimate body of work, a personal meditation on art, history, preservation and the photographic medium.
—
Sam Falls (b. 1984, San Diego, CA) spent his formative years in Vermont and now resides in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BA from Reed College in 2007 and his MFA from ICP-Bard in 2010. He has self-published over ten books in addition to titles Color Dying Light (Hassla, 2009), Dans la Chambre Verte (JSBJ, 2010), Light Work (Gottlund Verlag, 2010) and Visible Library (Lay Flat, 2011). Falls’ work has been included in group shows at the International Center of Photography, OHWOW, Blackston Gallery, Bodega, Center for Photography at Woodstock, as well as solo exhibitions at Fotografiska, Capricious Space and Higher Pictures.