Books are man-made artifacts designed to convey information. When they are inevitably invaded by forces of nature and decay, they become suggestive of an alternative literary universe. Noted photographer and collage artist Rosamond Purcell has been exploring this universe for the past thirty years, and in this extraordinarily beautiful collection, the first retrospective of her work, her images teach us to read in a new way. Here are two conjoined volumes transformed by a nesting mouse into a heap of disrupted plot and straw; a 19th century French economics text re-interpreted by foraging termites, and many other oddities from a fertile imagination. Bookworm's 125 color reproductions are imaginative evidence of those processes that render literal meaning irrelevant.

Rosamond Purcell is known for her collaborations with Stephen Jay Gould, often in conjunction with natural history museums, including Illuminations, Finders Keepers and Strange Cases. The official photographer of the Mutter Collection, her work has been exhibited at major museums nationwide, and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The National Academy of Science, and The Victoria and Albert in London, among many others.