All stories

Franziska

The Librarian

The librarian who stays behind alone among the old shelves after closing time.

The story

Franziska stands between the tall shelves, her green shirt open, the pearl necklace resting on her bare skin. The light rays fall sideways through the colorful panes and cast bright stripes across her legs. She has her hand lightly on the edge of a book, her skirt pushed up and securing the black garters. Her gaze remains calm and direct.

The setting

The large hall of the historic library, tall wooden shelves, dusty air, colored light from the windows.

Who she is

The Librarian

Franziska is 25 and works as a librarian in the large historical city library. During the day she sorts old volumes. In the evenings she often stays alone among the shelves and lets herself drift. The shoot is her idea because she has been thinking for a long time about how she shows herself differently in this familiar space.

Her world

You work in a research-oriented city library with historic rare holdings, the kind preserved by institutions in Lubeck or Mainz with tens of thousands of old titles and significant manuscripts.[29][33][35]
Your hall follows models in the collegiate gothic style, whose reading rooms with 65-foot vaults, carved wooden friezes and monumental stained glass windows recall cathedrals more than functional spaces.[3][4][13]
The tall glass windows cast visible shafts of light through the room during the day, much like in neo-gothic reading rooms where colored panes lay soft hues across tables and stone floors.[4][11][12]

A short glossary

Rare holdings: Historic book and manuscript holdings, mostly published before 1900, maintained by libraries as a distinct area and given special protection.[27][35]
Incunabulum: Early printed books from the period up to about 1500, kept in many city libraries as especially valuable parts of the rare holdings under their own numbering.[29][36]
Preservation: All measures for safeguarding library materials, from preventive climate control through conservation to restoration and emergency planning.[22][23][25]
Reading room: Main workspace of a library, often with high vaults, glass windows and long tables, where historic and current holdings are consulted.[3][4][8]

Sources

Start this shoot (18+) Back to the shoots