Since 1996, Gatten has been at work on a nine-part film series that takes as inspiration the 4,000-volume library of William Byrd II, an American colonial writer, planter, and government official. The individual films explore one or more titles from the library while also elliptically describing episodes in the lives of Byrd and his daughter Evelyn. At least four parts were completed; the fifth part was in progress between 2005 and 2009. Curator and writer Henriette Huldisch described the cycle as follows: "Focusing on specific volumes from the library, letters, and personal papers, Gatten's series probes the relationship between printed words and images, philosophical ideas, historical records, and biography. Throughout, his thematic concerns are realized in an array of cinematic processes and techniques, constituting a parallel survey of the medium's history."