Collective Memory

Doug Keyes's photographs investigate the ways that knowledge stacks upon itself over time, leaving an impression or ''collective memory.'' In his first monograph, Collective Memory, Keyes's luminous color images of books literally reveal and sometimes conceal this stacking by capturing through multiple exposure the experience of reading the book. The resulting single image is a condensed document of the experience, the ideas contained within, and the physical identity of the book itself. The books Keyes chooses to photograph from art books and works of fiction, to poetry books and books on scientific theory hold personal meaning or remembrance for him and become sites to revisit. Keyes's photographs in fact make visible the pleasure of leafing through a text and the memory of that experience. Includes essay by Sheryl Conkelton