The book surgeon

Thanks to my good friend the Bandit for sending me this. Amazing! 

American artist Brian Dettmer uses knives, tweezers and surgical tools to carve - one page at a time - the insides of old encyclopaedias, illustrated books and medical journals, reinventing books as an artform.

'My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception,' he says.
'The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world. By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge.'

You can see more of his work here.

I'm assured no books were harmed in the creation of these artworks. They had all passed of natural causes.