'The Pages Project' brings the beauty of physical books online

Image: Flickr, Nic McPhee



Though it officially launched in October, The Pages Project was conceived back in 2007, when Schmitt inherited his grandfather's library. While looking through the collection, Schmitt noticed that each book was filled with underlined passages and personal notes written in the margins.

"It was a really powerful experience seeing the thought process and the intelligence of this person that I used to know captured through books, Schmitt told Mashable. "This is a really powerful thing about the printed page that we don't see anymore."


"There's something that's tactile about it. There's an underline in pencil. Then there's an underline in blue ink and and then there's one in black ink and they're all kind of layered. That's why I photograph instead of scanning. I can light them so that you can see more of the texture of the paper."



Schmitt's reverence for physical books doesn't mean that he turns away from e-readers. In fact, quite the contrary — Schmitt was on the team that created the original Amazon Kindle.



And for Schmitt, that's a good thing.


Whether the digital page erases the physical page is yet to be seen, but until then, The Pages Project will continue to offer a stunning homage to all things printed literature.

You can check out more of The Pages Project's annotation collection and submit your own book page to the project here.