los libros de la biblioteca no tienen letras
cuando los abro surgen

the books of the library have no words
when I open them they come up

Jorge Luis Borges, "La Dicha"

THE LIBRARY

As an Argentinian immigrant in Israel I had to confront the abyss of life in a place where an unknown language is spoken.

I started to take pictures of every page of my Spanish-Hebrew dictionary. The photos created a world through which I could travel, a world of enormous beauty whose meaning I would reveal by the light of my photos.

In the midst of this exploration a very strange thing happened: one day I found about twenty abandoned books in the street. They seemed to be part of the same library because they were printed in German and most of them were valuable 19th century editions. Since then, I have continued to rescue more books from the street, the beach, or even from the garbage.

The books have the most diverse origins, they are printed in many languages and have come from all parts of the world. I have added other books that I found at the flea market, continuing to photograph their pages, looking for the emotional and sensory experience in the simple act of opening a book -- knowing that there will be a meeting, a memory, a journey or a mirror, even in a language I canˆït understand.

A strange and special library has taken, shape where classic and unknown authors coexist, as do handbooks, novels, essays and dictionaries; philosophy, phonetics and music.

A library which is a refuge for these books that will probably not be read, but whose pages continue to offer to the senses their own beauty and their own travelers' stories.