I’ve always photographed in libraries, perhaps because I feel so comfortable in them. This time I attracted attention, and a woman in uniform came up to me and told me in Spanish that photography wasn’t permitted. There was a loophole though. I could apply for a pass and then it would be allowed.
The office I was required to go to was in the back of the library, and in my broken Spanish I asked if I could take pictures and was given a form to fill out. That, coupled with identification, and soon I received a plastic tag on a lanyard which identified me as okay to use a camera (unlike everyone else snapping away with their phones!).
Biblioteca Vasconcelos is an enormous open space with the library stacks hung off the ceiling. It’s so much fun to be in – you can see the surprise and glee on the faces of people entering just for being in the space. Anyone can use the library, and many people do.
It was designed by the architect Alberto Kalach and was built next to the old Buenavista railway station, north of the city center, opening in May of 2006. Housing a collection of 600,000 books (using the Dewey Decimal System!), it also features a hanging skeleton of a large gray whale decorated by the artist Gabriel Orozco called “Matrix Móvil”. We were privileged to see an extensive retrospective of Orozco’s work in the Museo Jumex (March, 2025) which I’ll describe in a later post. This whale creation is well traveled, having been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2009.
In case you missed it, you can click on the photos above for an expanded slideshow.
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