A Collection of Collections, develped from my own love of collection, from a desire for the primacy of visiual chaos, and from the study of collection in a class that is focused on Repatraiton, an act of return and communion. As I searched for a form for this project, I began to see collections all about me and I all of sudden lost something I knew, a full defineiotn of collection. With this, the act of collection become foreing and natural, perpexing and curious. The collections shown in the following pages highlight the love stored in objects from people in my personal life and on campus. However in the next page I have included a couple of images that have appeared to me over the course this semester. And, while the quality and the liting vary, these images still provide me with some fun visual choas.

As you read and look and enjoy all of these collections and thoughts that I have gotten to read and view and enjoy, I invite you to consider two things.Feel free to do so even if you aren’t a collector in the formal sense!

  • If you had a hunger for objects what would you consume?
  • What’s something that you wish you collect but you can’t (because it is too expensive, big, immaterial, etc)

Halfinger Farms, Higganum, CT

Luizzi’s Gourmet Food Market, North Haven, CT

DeLuca’s Market, Boston, MA

Mom

The woman who started it all. As I worked to put a form to a Collection of Collections every step of my wondering has returned to her.

Sitting on a couch in an home, I didn’t grow up in, my mom and I squished together, she peers into my phone as I scroll through Instagram and a friends vacation photos make me long for a time out of school. Open skys and tall buildings…

a produce market, ….a produce market….,

oh wait go back, what was that…ohh thats really nice, I want to go to something like that” She eyes widen and voice raises as I swipe back to the market, her pining reminds me of my own and in excitement, I promise her we qould go to the Boston Market, The one just on the water, the one with 4 for 5 oysters and $2 raspbarries , the one dean used to bring me to, just around the corner from Quincy market.

Her kneenest toward the market is not my moms only fasination with collections. Hidden, however unintentionally, was of well over a hundred stamp books, all layed genetly in a cloth See’s candy bag.

It was this bag that she instructed me to retrieve when I requested to take photos. I plopped it on the living room floor and we spent at least an hour of our Easter Sunday categorizing every sheet. Wile I ended up taking photos of all the stamps that I could, the photos, would had taken up 5 whole pages. So instead, in the interest of space and balance, I have add a selcted few to the left in hopes of providing a hint into the satasfaction of visual chaos that my mom and I so seem to enjoy.

Dean

Almost without my noticing, the goal of every shopping trip, however varied has become a mission of retrieval. Behind walls of home goods and personal care, behind food and clothes, sits one esile, piled with toys.

Dean and I dodge through parents and kids and karts to this elise and with interest and intense inspection, Dean sifts through a mess of miniature model cars.

Desperate to join his hunt, I too attempt with my own untrained eye to desinguist between the little cars and even though he knows my tastes are far from his, and that my critiques could never be so careful, he allows me ever so kindly to add cars of my own. So now, what was once one collection becomes two.

Adam

This card set is beyond beauty and beyond care. Collected by Adam, this card set is his own pride and joy but for me and my family, it has transformed into a matter of divison, dividing family loyalites that had already began to run thin. For me, this collection is joy, it is divious, and it is our family future.

Sana

In her response to my flyers and survey, Sana remarked that however having a collection, she didn’t know if it would be visusally itneresting enough to warrent presentation or photography. This asssertention has challanged me to wonder two things…

Why must it be visually interesting to photograph, to present, to warent sharing?

What vulnerability comes from sharing something you love?

Sana was the first person to respond to my sparsly placed flyers, requesting people share their collections with me and hers is the only photo that remains uncropped and unedited.

Emmet

Kindly, Emmet eagarly participated in my survey and I got to photograph a burgening collection. Like myself, Emmet keeps his post cards in plastic sleeves, protecting them from the dangers of wear in the real world. And again like me… at least, for the most part, much of the post cards in emmets colection remain unused….

Why proect something so cheap and meant for use without ever actually using it?

Sloane

Sloane collects camera equipment and glass bottles (unfortunetly not featured here) It was with sloane, that I felt like I was getting into a flow with the project and decided to try something new, to ask her the question that I had asked the readers above, what something you wish you could collect but you cant?

Her Answer: Churches

My Answer: Antique Stores

Our Combo: Church + Antique Store (Post Service Shopping)

Julia

One of the things that I found my help loving about collections (that can also be found in antique stores, and if you look close enough, museums), is the visual chaos of looking at a collection as a whole. The conjoining of various little things that stratches an itch that some attribute to a gathering instinct. Instinct or obsession, at the very least, a helioscope of collections is sure fun to look at.