[WIL TO WIN, 2012, book spine]

The Arts House Trust at Pah Homestead in Hillsborough is currently exhibiting (to 24 May 2026) the archival photography of Mickey Smith. A two-decade-long hobby to photo-document the end-of-life books in library collections across America and the South Pacific, has earned Mickey Smith the reputation as a prolific chronicler of antiquated volumes.

From chained libraries to digitisation, deaccessioning and artificial intelligence, Morphologies asks us to consider our evolving relationships with books and the institutions that shape our collective cultural memory.

The majority of her work puts focus on the spines. The precisely arranged images themselves may not look entirely capable of holding one’s attention, but the gravitas of the photographed few is in their scarcity, representing the hundreds and thousands of other printed copies that no longer exist. After being scanned and digitized for space saving reasons, the books that Mickey Smith is invited to take photos of are destroyed. Old information. Old language. Old objects. The transition period of mass digitisation is something new however, and Mickey Smith has managed to capture the ripples of that significant wave, one that the eyes of the public are not often privy to quantifying: Text materials of a bygone printing age swept away by the times.

Smith’s photography […] continuously explores the state of entropy within libraries, as we witness information systems shift, digitize and collections become deaccessioned.

Free Radical / Time, 2009 / Hysteria – The Arts House Trust at Pah Homestead main foyer

Artificial Intelligence, 2024, Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 1100 x 1100 mm

LIT, 2024, Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 1550 x 1100 mm

WORD STUDY

LAST, 2025, Archival pigment print on paper

Not as comprehensive a collection of work as previous other venues (why no book floor? did OSH (Occupational Safety and Health) get in the way of conceptual art?); still interesting and good to see.

*Shivers* Here’s a morbid thought; was reminded of old Victorian post-mortem photography just then, when it was trendy to have a portrait taken of the recently deceased. Look it up in your own time. A similarity seldom made in reference to. . .anything, so, sorry Mickey Smith, but welcome to blog culture. Type raw thoughts now; delete later; similarities everywhere!

Off to bury my head in a book.

Here is a very pertinent video, for anyone unable to make the Morphologies exhibition: