The album includes photos of about 80 unique manuscripts, black letter and rare books of around 70,000 volumes of rarities contained in the National Library. These books follow the history of countries and nations, they are the very cultural heritage of this country. Among the rare books are the manuscript of the 16th century “The Secret of Secrets, or Gates of Aristotle” in the Old-Belarusian language, monuments to the Slavonic and East-European languages, the Bible published by the Belarusian first printer Frantsisk Skaryna (Prague, 1517–1519), Petr Mstislavets, Ivan Fyodorov, Vasily Garaburda, the Mamonich brothers, books from the publishing house of Nikolai Radzivill the Black and books with autographs of Maxim Bogdanovich, Mark Shagal, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Bunin, Anatole France, Victor Hugo, Marina Tsvetayeva and Pablo Picasso. The comments are in Belarusian and English.Some copies of the album will be delivered to the largest libraries of Belarus and foreign countries. The photographer Andrei Schukin, who was involved in the project, told us he used the light and shadows to produce an effect of a “live book”, which seems to be looking at the reader and shining from within.
