"Niederösterreichische Landesbibliothek, Eck 3"

c-print mounted on aluminum

Titled, signed, dated and numbered (ink) on mount verso

Photography ignores space; everything comes to the fore. Anything appearing in front of the camera is compressed; the closest taking precedence over the more distant, with the latter positioned atop thefinal. The one obscures parts of the next which, in turn, obscures those following – and so it goes on. Elongated bodies assume broader or narrower surfaces – depending on the angle from which they are viewed. Deformation occurs. Rectangles turn into trapezia and flat objects into lines as the case may be, while ovals may take on circular forms. All that remains are contours, patterns and colours.
The optics of the apparatus has set the visible objects in a new perspective that is recorded as a picture. The viewer seeks the link to reality as he creates something different from the discernible: a construct that counters the assertiveness of the lens and mirrors, enriched by, and formed after his own experience and perception. It is not a case of reconstructing the circumstances that prevailed at the time the picture was taken, but of delineating something anew that relates the components of the picture to one’s memories and imaginings. We term this process seeing.
The distinctive workmanship of books and our treatment of them have found their way into Robert Zahornicky’s concept in a variety of guises. He visits public and private libraries and selects a detail that is then captured in a horizontal perspective. Frequently the camera is so close to the rows of books that the embossing and imprints on the spines can be deciphered. One is either looking into a corner or approaching the wall head on. The c-prints measuring 50 x 40 cm or 150 x 75 cm are mounted on aluminium sheets, the two sides of which stand at right angles to each other. Thus, one appears to be looking at a book corner that does not reveal its sources straightaway. Only on seeing the mismatch in the perspectives of the left- and right-hand sections of the picture does one realise that at the time the picture was taken, the right angles did not exist. The caption names the place where the photograph was taken.
The known mingles with the unknown, the legible with the indistinct, the real corner shelving with the photographic image. The space lost through visualisation is regained with the staging of the picture. Needless to say, it is another space, but one that equally attracts the viewer of the original and photograph alike.  The book corner stands not only for the material convergence of two walls of shelving, but also as a synonym for withdrawal from everyday life: a place of convivial self-identification, a refuge of calm and obliviousness, sometimes a place with an armchair and a reading lamp.
Each picture promises insight into the world of printed records, of knowledge and ideas, as well as experience. And if one moves closer, bursting with curiosity and expectations, so as to ascertain what one is actually looking at, the attentiveness is similar to that of a reader’s head bowed over an open book. Robert Zahornicky has appropriated that same form for his book corners. They avail themselves of the gesture associated with the turning of a page; they appropriate the turning of pages, which is also a change of perspective, the very moment that signifies conclusion and commencement alike, in which the secrets of old still resonate and the new begins to unfold.
(Timm Starl, translated by Peter Lillie)