It was not easy to find a photo of these bookshelves as they were installed in my parents’ house. The shelves were behind a table and hard to photograph, and they were also not very photogenic. I thought they were cool and modern in the sixties, but I never thought they were important (I do now). The shelves are probably in the background of some other photos, but this one from 1972 was the first I came across and is certainly more interesting than the rest. Many of the books in this shot are still on these shelves.
This is probably about a 10 second exposure. I might have had someone turn out the room light while I moved between positions. I used Panatomic X, a very slow (ASA 32), very fine grained film. Fall, 1972.
I moved these shelves to Vermont in 1999 and installed them on the second floor of my house where they were stuffed full of books. To make them fit I had to cut about seven inches off each of the four vertical aluminum poles. I have wanted to move the shelves down to the living room for several years even though all the other furniture down there is not modern (that’s why they didn’t go there originally). But the poles were now too short for that room. I looked into buying new poles, but the company is long gone.
