The Offbeat Paper Airplane Collection of the Brilliant Beat Era Artist Harry Everett Smith

Among the tremendous amount of things that the brilliant beat artist Harry Everett Smith accomplished in his lifetime, one of them was his offbeat and wonderful collection of paper airplanes that he gathered over the course of a 20-year period, cataloguing the ever-changing New York City through the scraps of paper that he used to take flight.

The Collections of Harry Smith, Catalogue Raisonné series spotlights and indexes his eclectic research obsessions. Volume one features richly detailed photographic documentation of 251 paper airplanes gathered by Smith from the streets of New York City over an approximately 20-year period. Whimsical and weird, the paper airplanes rank among Smith’s most mysterious collecting pursuits. This extensive compendium presents the fruits of his extraordinary aeronautic pursuit and highlights the tangled history and myths that accompany them.

Paper Airplanes: The Collections of Harry Smith Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I is available for purchase through Artbook.

images via J&L Books