nicoatridge
New York Public Library
There she sits, poor child, pamphlet in hand, oblivious of the danger she’s in. To the innocent eye the public library may appear to be a solemn, dignified temple of learning. Do not be fooled by the grand staircases, the marble arches, the elegant mezzanine. Behind that cultured facade, the public library is teeming with wild passions and dangerous ideas.
This young woman might go innocently in search of a chaste and virtuous book on gardening, only to find herself lured into a nearby room and seduced by a fleshy and flirty potboiler or clubbed over the head by a detective novel. She might be seeking a sober volume on the care and feeding of nasturtiums, and before she knows it she’s become entangled in the exotic history of the tulip…from the scented harems of Suleiman the Magnificent to the lurid madness of 17th century Dutch tulip mania.
Poor child, maybe nobody warned you. You have to be careful in a library. You never know what you might learn.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
