People carry an empty coffin past a street food vendor into the shop that is buying it to repair and sell in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, September 13, 2024. (Photo by Odelyn Joseph/AP Photo)

Ecuadorian luthier Ivan Ibujes plays a guitar after repairing it at his shop in Quito, June 17, 2016. (Photo by Guillermo Granja/Reuters)

Workers repair a damaged road, in the aftermath of an earthquake, near Anamizu, Japan on January 3, 202. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A worker manually changes the direction of the bonde, the typical tram line in Santa Teresa neighborhood, using a rope in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 9, 2015. The Santa Teresa bonde, called “Bondinho” in Portuguese, is running with passengers as a part of a test period, after the service was suspended in 2011 following an accident that killed six people, according to residents. (Photo by Pilar Olivares/Reuters)

A car mechanic repairs a tire hoop at the Nicolini Collection Car Museum in Lima, Peru June 1, 2017. (Photo by Guadalupe Pardo/Reuters)

A man transports a car on a horse cart to a repair shop along a street in Amritsar on May 6, 2021. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

People will spout about impermanence of digital records, but books are really fragile, too. Alexis Arnold from San Francisco wanted to illustrate that with her project The Crystallized Book: collecting books and growing Borax crystals on them. Books range from literature classics to magazines, and there’s even a mysterious and arcane tome called “Linux: The Complete Manual”.

Workers sleep on a railway track under repair in New Delhi, India, June 15, 2018. (Photo by Saumya Khandelwal/Reuters)