When I Was a Boy

When I Was a Boy (2018) is Katrien De Blauwer's contribution to Libraryman's Seasons Series, a compact monograph built from found photographs the Belgian artist (b. 1969) cuts, layers, and reassembles into image without ever touching a camera.

The book gathers 27 color plates drawn from De Blauwer's practice of collecting vintage magazine and studio photography, then cutting each image down to a single ambiguous gesture &mdash a shoulder, a collar, a half-obscured face &mdash so that presence and erasure sit on the same page. Bound as a color offset hardcover with linen thread binding, a brown headband, and white foil-stamped cover typography, the 32-page volume was released in an edition of 500, with a signed 25-copy special edition in a screenprinted slipcase. It was shortlisted for the Author Book Award at Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2018.

De Blauwer, who studied painting in Ghent before abandoning fashion studies at Antwerp's Royal Academy, calls herself a "photographer without a camera": her collages work by subtraction and accumulation, the cut standing in for the frame. She is represented by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris and Gallery Fifty One in Antwerp, and shows regularly at Paris Photo and Art Brussels When I Was a Boy inaugurated a run of Libraryman monographs that continued with Why I Hate Cars (2019) and You Could at Least Pretend to Like Yellow (2020).