Every Book by Aspen Mays

With a keen sense of humor, Aspen Mays explores the relationship between scientific investigation and the photographic medium to question what knowledge can be gained through systems of cataloguing, classification and documentation.


 Every book is a series of photographs that document every book about Albert Einstein available through the Illinois Collegiate Inter-Library Loan service. These were then organized by Mays according to the color spectrum to create a series of individual "rainbows" -- referencing Einstein's theories about light and gravity. With these works, Mays asks how the systematic presentation of individual parts affects our understanding of the whole.