Photographer Bryan David Griffith sees more in
bookstores than just a place to buy books. To Griffith, a bookstore is a place
where people can get away from a hectic, bustling world.
That notion took Griffith on yearlong tour of
independent bookstores around the country for a photo project he called The
Last Bookstore, America’s Resurgent Independents.
Griffith told the online magazine Slate he was drawn to the design of the stores when he compared them to big-box
retail chains. He also took inspiration from photographs of storefronts in the
1930s.
“Bookstores are holdouts from an earlier era,” he said.
“It’s not nostalgia necessarily, more of a study about the retail space and how
it might be different 30 years from now.”