Dusty Junk: lost & found photographs

 In February of 2009, I went to New York City for the first time. It was a voyage of self-discovery in a lot of ways, but there was one (pretty insignificant) thing that I found there that changed my life. While exploring Williamsburg (a hipster haven, yes, but nowhere are hipsters more inclusive and friendly than in New York, I think, except maybe Edmonton), my good friend Grace and I stumbled into a beautiful antique shop, the basement hidey-hole simply known as Junk.

Well, antique and thrift stores are not really that dissimilar wherever you go, but walking into this place was like a scene in a movie. A bit of light drifted in the windows, lighting up piles and piles of kitsch, culture, history, and of course, dust. Tom Waits was on their stereo and their cashier, sporting the obligatory moustache and retro-cool hat, chatted up an older fellow about records. Grace and I happily explored the store, delighting in this or that piece of nostalgia that we would never be able to bring back home in our suitcases. Eventually, as we were just about to leave, we came across a large trough beneath one of the store's windows.

This trough was absolutely brimming with photographs! Colour, black and white, slide and print, and they dated from about as far back as photos can be, and as recent as what could be a few days prior to our visit. I know selling photos like this is probably not news to most people, but we had never seen anything like it before.

There were photos of lovers, children, pets... Some were hilarious, like a photo a man had taken of his own erection, and some were extraordinarily mundane, like photos of recitals or Christmas dinners. I was amazed that people would throw away some of these pictures, and more amazed that there was a system in place where they could be sold and reclaimed. Clearly there is a market for pre-owned photographs, and clearly it's not just me that finds them totally captivating!

Grace and I dug through that bin for an hour or two (we lost track of the time) and emerged with a handful of photos, each. I can't say what drove us to buy the ones we selected. For me, it was an expression on someone's face, or a passing resemblance to someone I knew, or even just the absurdity of the photo itself. Maybe just something about it.

I think it was then that I realized how much power can be held in a photograph, even without any artistic vision to have guided its being taken. They are images frozen for perpetuity, and I know you know that, but what is amazing is how like human memory they are. They are limited, shaped by the way they were taken, and can only by interpreted by comparing them to the rest of our experience.

Here are some pictures of humans I bought in Brooklyn.

xoxo Caity