What began as a study of branch libraries in San Francisco soon expanded into a study of libraries throughout California and the American West. It eventually encompassed photographing libraries throughout the United States and culminated in the book The Public Library: A Photographic Essay published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2014. In that same year I received a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed me to shift my study from the macro to the micro – from studying libraries throughout the country to looking at one struggling library system in Stockton and San Joaquin County, CA.

In 2016, Ellen, our son Walker and I began The Global Library Project. We expanded what we had learned from photographing libraries throughout the United States to a global perspective. We started by photographing libraries in northern and eastern Europe, as well as Ukraine and Moscow. Our journey took us from a library in the infamous refugee camp called the Jungle in Calais, France to Holocaust-haunted former synagogues turned into libraries in Poland to libraries close to the hot war in eastern Ukraine to the National Library of Russia called the Lenin Library. Two years later, I received a 2018-2019 Fulbright Global Scholar Fellowship to spend six months with Ellen in Greece, Italy and Israel. Throughout this Fellowship we worked tirelessly to understand the role of libraries in each of these countries with their connected and separate histories and cultures. Certain themes emerged from our photography that became the basis of our current and future work.

What began as a study of branch libraries in San Francisco soon expanded into a study of libraries throughout California and the American West. It eventually encompassed photographing libraries throughout the United States and culminated in the book The Public Library: A Photographic Essay published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2014. In that same year I received a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed me to shift my study from the macro to the micro – from studying libraries throughout the country to looking at one struggling library system in Stockton and San Joaquin County, CA.

In 2016, Ellen, our son Walker and I began The Global Library Project. We expanded what we had learned from photographing libraries throughout the United States to a global perspective. We started by photographing libraries in northern and eastern Europe, as well as Ukraine and Moscow. Our journey took us from a library in the infamous refugee camp called the Jungle in Calais, France to Holocaust-haunted former synagogues turned into libraries in Poland to libraries close to the hot war in eastern Ukraine to the National Library of Russia called the Lenin Library. Two years later, I received a 2018-2019 Fulbright Global Scholar Fellowship to spend six months with Ellen in Greece, Italy and Israel. Throughout this Fellowship we worked tirelessly to understand the role of libraries in each of these countries with their connected and separate histories and cultures. Certain themes emerged from our photography that became the basis of our current and future work.

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