Kaleidoscopic Artwork Made Out of Old Phone Books

Cara Barer’s work feels like a Rorschach test of sorts. The Houston-based fine art photographer takes discarded printed materials like maps, encyclopedias, phone books, and old computer manuals, and transforms them into colorful abstract sculptures, which she then shoots against a stark black backdrop. Most of the resulting images take on predictable shapes, like butterflies, pinwheels, or flowers, but others have a decidedly less familiar, almost alien quality to them, like something you’d spot floating in some dark corner of space or lurking at the bottom of a petri dish. Click through and let us know what you see in the comments.

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I see cross sections of my head being split open by a bullet fired at the speed of light.

What a novel idea! There are some familiar shapes, flowers and butterflies, and then some not so familiar. And very beautiful colors used. Symmetry seems to be a constant theme.

Some of them look like vegetables, like a cross-section of a cabbage or artichoke. Amazing that something human-made can conjure up the hidden beauty in nature.

Interesting I am reminded of things under an electron microscope there is something of that ethereal structure of things about them.

WoW!! This is by far the coolest thing I've seen to do with old phone books!!

These are beautiful! I see faces!