The artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s whimsical personal library includes volumes on architectural history, urban planning, art, philosophy, and poetry, as well as a lovely 1962 edition of John Milton’s . Many contain personal markings—not only notations and underlines but, in some instances, telephone numbers and even recipes. His collection is a reminder of how books can inform and inflect the creative process, and weave their way into our lives. Seventy volumes from his library are part of the collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), in Montreal, which recently opened . The nearly yearlong exhibition is the first in a planned trilogy of shows over the next decade that will take stock of the organization’s vast and impressive photography collection. With work by Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lynne Cohen, Luigi Ghirri, Takashi Homma, Matta-Clark, Richard Misrach, Michael Schmidt, Jeff Wall, and Marianne Wex, among many others, this first iteration is a deluge of some of the most formidable photographic projects of the last fifty years.
