James Trevino doesn't just read a lot of books, he also collects them and turns them into works of art. Who said print was dead? He's is a bookstagrammer, who shares his love of books with his fans through conversation and colorful self portraits that takes hours to put together. We chatted with Trevino to find out how he does it. Following is a transcript of the video.
James Trevino: My name is James. I'm from Romania. I'm 24 years old, and I do this thing called Bookstagram.
It's this community on Instagram for people who obviously love to read.
The first thing I did were these videos: book dominoes.
And I started this angel series, where I had wings made of books, because I have this weird obsession with angels and supernatural.
I finished law school last year and decided to take a year off. I felt like I needed a break. It was a bit restrictive with my creativity.
I get about 80% of my books online. I never pick them because of their color. I don't have enough money to spend on something like that, and I'm actually blessed enough to have already enough books so that they are pretty much enough for any project I have in mind. I have about 1,150, something like that.
Part of them belong to my father and are classics, and I don't particularly enjoy classics.
I actually never bother organizing them unless I have to take a pic. Otherwise, no. First of all, I have to come up with an idea, and that is usually easier said than done.
I have this friend, Elizabeth, who helps me with most of my pics. We brainstorm together. I take my pics in bulk, about once or twice a month.
Some of them are fandom based, because fandom-based pics do way better.
We usually bring out the books, we put them on the floor, and we do at first a few pics without me in them to see if they fit all right and all that stuff, and then finally we take about 100 shots and we hope one of them is good. And the whole process takes about, I don't know, two to three hours per pic.
Sometimes you need to add details that are impossible to create with books.
I had this idea a while back to do the Deathly Hallows symbol from Harry Potter, and basically it is a big, big triangle, and in the middle of it, there is basically a vertical line. And I was supposed to be that vertical line, and I was just too big to fit. That was taken in two parts, like one was me alone, and the other one was the triangle, and with the editing and everything it took about six hours total.
My favorite book series is "Harry Potter." It was love at first sight. I discovered it when I was about 13 or so, and before then, I actually hated, I hated reading with a burning passion. It was just so bad. Like, when my parents tried to force me to read books, I would actually end up throwing them away.