Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books Project

In 1993 Brooklyn, New York artist Nina Katchadourian began the Sorted Books project.

"The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings. At present, the Sorted Booksproject comprises more than 130 book clusters" (http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/languagetranslation/sortedbooks.php, accessed 10-27-2013).

In 2013 Chronicle Books issued Katchadourian's book entitled Sorted Books with many color reproductions of her arrangements.