Once Belonged
to Others
I began collecting second-hand books and looking beyond their intended content. Instead, I became interested in the physical and personal marks left behind by previous owners: worn covers, folded pages, handwritten notes, inscriptions, photographs, tickets and other objects forgotten between the pages. These traces transform the books from anonymous objects into carriers of stories.
The book is divided into three chapters, each focusing on a different type of trace.
Content is divided into three chapters: Worn Pages and Torn Covers features well-used books with creases, tears, and faded covers; Messages Between the Lines highlights personal inscriptions, hurried notes, and handwritten messages; and Hidden Treasures uncovers unexpected items like tickets, photographs, or newspaper clippings tucked inside books.
The chapter Worn Pages and Torn Covers focuses on the physical history of the books. Creased pages, damaged spines, torn covers and faded materials reveal how often a book has been handled and how many places it may have travelled through. Rather than treating these imperfections as damage, the chapter presents them as evidence of a book's life outside the story written inside it.
Throughout the book, the collection is guided by Henk, a passionate book collector I encountered during the process of gathering the material. His own collection and discoveries appear throughout the publication, creating a recurring thread between the different chapters.
The black pages mark the moments that are connected to Henk and his personal collection. They contain a mixture of his own words, messages addressed to him, and collections or objects that have been given to him by friends, family and acquaintances. Rather than presenting Henk as a narrator, these pages offer a glimpse into the network of people and memories that surround his collecting practice. The black pages therefore create a visual distinction between the anonymous traces found in second-hand books and the more personal traces connected to Henk.
In this way, Henk becomes a link between the physical objects and the people behind them, connecting the unknown histories found in second-hand books with his own ongoing collection of memories, messages and objects.
The chapter Messages Between the Lines shifts from physical traces to personal ones. Handwritten dedications, annotations and hurried notes reveal moments of interaction between a reader and a book. These fragments can be intimate, humorous or completely unexplained. Without knowing who wrote them or why, the reader is left to imagine the conversations and relationships that once existed around the book.
To emphasise this shift in focus, the books in this chapter are presented in black and white. By reducing the visual information, the handwritten words become the primary point of attention.
The chapter Hidden Treasures focuses on the objects discovered inside the books. Tickets, photographs, newspaper clippings and other forgotten items become small time capsules. Removed from their original context, they raise questions rather than provide answers: Who put this here? Why was it kept? Was it deliberately left behind, or simply forgotten?
The book is designed as an archive rather than a conventional narrative. The material is carefully organised and documented, while still leaving space for uncertainty and speculation. At the end of the publication, an index catalogues every book featured in the collection and indicates the pages on which it appears. This gives the publication an archival structure and allows each object to be traced back through the book.
By combining photography, archival organisation and fragments of anonymous personal histories, Once Belonged to Others explores how ordinary objects can contain traces of people we will never meet. The books may have been discarded or passed on, but the marks left inside them allow parts of their previous lives to remain.