Sign your name across my heart.

Romance Traces deals with the material culture of Romance Novels. Specifically, the images are scans of the front and back pages of (mostly) large-print romance novels sourced from public libraries in the North-West Suburbs of Melbourne. They are marked in various ways: by the bureaucratic stamps and labels of the cataloging systems they are enmeshed in; but also by hand, by the individuals who borrow them and leave their personalised initials to let themselves know which they have already read (in a genre flooded with barely individuated storylines and titles). These personal marks create an invisible network, an autonomously arrived at, and anonymously agreed upon system amongst a community of readers. It connects them to each other in fragile and intangible ways, in what is otherwise a totally intimate indulgence in personal pleasure and fantasy.