Now on webcam: The Windbook by photographic artist Accra Shepp

The American photographic artist Accra Shepp has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the US and abroad. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Walther Collection, the Museum of the City of New York and Princeton University, as well as in numerous books and publications.

In 2014, Accra Shepp worked with 20 art students at the International School in Luxembourg. He instructed them in how to photograph people in the public squares and to collect short narratives from them about their personal lives or backgrounds. The aim was to address Luxembourg’s relationship with national identity, personal history and diversity. Shepp gathered this material and reshaped it into a large-scale book, which became the Windbook.

The Windbook is currently exhibited in the courtyard of the National Library of Luxembourg until December 2018. The book will be exposed to the elements and the wind will turn its pages for viewers to observe. After several months outdoors, the pages of the book will have fused together to form a sculptural, wave-like shape. By positioning it outside, away from the viewers’ hands, Shepp subverts human agency. The book does not obey our bidding but instead the larger forces of the world to which all are subject and reminds us of the limitations of the human reach.

The online Windbook

Every 15 minutes, a camera takes a picture of the book.