Manuscripts don't burn, Mikhail Bulgakov once famously declared, but they DO decay - and Rosamond Purcell brilliantly captures and records that decomposition in the photography and collage-art of Bookworm. Whether revealing the strange beauty of a clay-like book, the striking similarities between written symbols and dried beetle legs, or the remarkably book-like qualities of stone and brick, Purcell offers a gorgeous, thought-provoking visual essay on the inexorable passage of time, and the inevitably transient nature of human activity and achievement.

As Sven Birkerts notes in his introduction, Purcell cleverly juxtaposes the seemingly disparate elements of her "picture," encouraging the viewer to draw connections between previously unconnected themes and ideas. So it is that golden autumn leaves give the impression of flames, as in the cover piece, Leaves; the burnt book in Dante's Inferno somehow looks like an exotic blue-black butterfly; and the gorillas and other primates who show up with some regularity never look out of place in the "human" landscape.

I found myself unexpectedly moved by many of Purcell's pieces, which were both beautiful and grotesquely melancholy. If, as the artist maintains, all the world's an altered page, than I am grateful for the keen eyes that managed to pick out a few of those alterations, and offer them up for my examination. ( )