Thomas Allen's work has been noted on many blogs over the past few years — just start with this page and follow the links — but Text Patterns would be incomplete without some acknowledgement of it.
Allen takes old pulp paperbacks, carefully cuts out figures from their covers, reassembles the images into something like little pop-up books, and photographs the results. They're fab.
Text Patterns
May 15, 2009
Astonishing stuff.