Project 10 of 17
Found Books & Shop
Cafés · Cochrane, Alberta
Six aerial takes. Nine photographs from inside.
Found Books & Shop stands at 208 1st Street West in Cochrane, behind a timber-framed gable with its name painted on a board — the same street as MacKay's, and the same row as Route 22 Art Gallery.
Inside, the shelves run to the ceiling, a café works at the back, and a staircase drops to a room where the records live under neon. Atom2Adam Studio filmed the building from the air, six takes across about an hour of one evening, and Nathan photographed the rooms from the ground at sixty megapixels a frame. Nothing was staged, nothing was lit, nothing was tidied for the camera. The coaster under the cappuccino is a seven-inch single.
- Subject
- An independent bookshop, café and record room at 208 1st Street West in Historic Downtown Cochrane — new and used books upstairs, an eclectic collection of records down the stairs.
- Intent
- Show the shop the way a morning in it goes: one object on the table first, the whole street last.
- Seen
- A painted board reading FOUND under a timber gable, two F monograms in the glass, shelves to the ceiling, festoon bulbs and neon, a reel-to-reel tape machine on a stack of books, record bins under exposed joists — and, from straight above, the rail line running past the block.
- Made
- Six aerial takes on one evening, about an hour from the first to the last, and nine photographs from the ground. Nothing staged, nothing lit, nobody posed.
I
The coaster
Two singles, a cappuccino, and a camera set down.
Cochrane Tourism lists Found as an independent bookstore, café, gift store and event space. The table says all four at once: a cappuccino, a pastry, a camera set down mid-shoot — and two seven-inch singles doing duty as coasters. It is the smallest thing in the shop and the clearest statement of what the shop is.
The records here are not all for sale. One of them is under your coffee.
II
The shelves
Shelves to the ceiling; matcha in front of the fiction.
The shelves carry new and used books across a wide range of genres — the shop's own description of its stock. They run the full height of the wall, and the top shelf is high enough to hold a plant rather than a reader. The glass in front of them is there because the café and the shelves are the same room.
A reel-to-reel on a stack of books.
III
The room
The main floor: shelves in rows, records overhead.
Found is also an event space, which is why the middle of the floor is kept clear and the seating is loose rather than fixed. Festoon bulbs cross the ceiling and records hang from it. The tape machine on the crate shelf is not obviously for sale; it is simply at home.
Festoon bulbs, and neon on the far wall.
IV
Downstairs
Downstairs: joists, posters, and bins of records.
The shop's own instruction is to head downstairs and flip through an eclectic collection of records. The stairs drop into a low room with exposed joists, white brick and framed posters. The light changes temperature completely between the two floors, which is why the photographs of this room look like a different building.
The bins, and the sign above them.
V
The name
Left to right across the whole front.
The name is painted on a board under the gable in serif capitals: FOUND. Two F monograms are set in the glass below it, one in each window. The take crosses the whole front at half speed, which is the only way to read a shopfront the way somebody walking past it does.
FOUND, in serif capitals under the gable.
VI
The front
The front, rising.
The front is a timber frame — posts, braces and a gable, cream stucco above the windows and a corrugated wainscot below them. Route 22 Art Gallery's red sign stands immediately to the left, in the same row of the same building. From here the two shops are one roofline.
The timber frame, from just above it.
Off the gable, and right.
From a seven-inch single under a cup to the whole street from above: one shop, one evening.
The front, receding.
VII
The street
Down onto the block.
From straight above, 1st Street West runs between the rooftops with the rail line beside it. MacKay's Ice Cream is at 220, twelve numbers up the same street. This frame was made about an hour before the five takes of the front, by the camera's own clock — the light is still high on the roofs.
Route 22's red sign, and Found's gable beside it.
1st Street West, from straight above.
Detail → Whole
Found Books & Shop ends. 17 projects in the collection.
