Amazon's Light
Amazon's Light was made in response to Amazon's list “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.” Ranging from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the books span a broad range of subjects and audiences, with virtually every book being eligible for Prime. While the absence of traditional religious texts was not surprising, I was curious about the criteria used to select the books. Amazon describes the list as covering “all stages of a life” while keeping it from feeling like “homework.” In this sense, I began to think of the list as a kind of canon established by Amazon.
For this project, I made a drawing for each book on Amazon’s list, with each drawing matching the exact size of the book it represents. I traced the outline of each book onto a sheet of paper and then filled it in with graphite. Playing on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Plato was absent from the list), the drawings function as shadows that have passed in front of Amazon’s light.