Woodward Ave. - Grant park "Yard Sale"I had almost given up on sales for the rest of the year as there were nearly no sellers posting ads for nearby sales in Craigslist this weekend. Getting in my car I drove past bare utility poles lacking any signs indicating yard sales to this one sale in the northern end of Grant Park. Here in the small front yard and porch of an old frame bungalow I found my sale for the day. There was not a lot here. Some books were spread out on the dead leaves of the slopping front yard, a table had been set up on the curb and a few things had been arranged near the front porch. The table on the curb held a colorful but somewhat sad looking collection of Xmas decor. Among the books laid out on the ground were “More growing Up Catholic”, “Sex Preferences”, “The Anglophile”, “The Queen”, “Introductory Psychology through Science Fiction”, “Motherhood, the Second Oldest Professions” and “Same Sex Unions”. On a table near the porch were some old VHS tapes. The films there included Mandingo, Code of Silence, Dumb and Dumber, Dying Young and Steel Dawn. Up the steps and around the porch I found a number of old looking household items such as a single mason jar, empty eyeglass cases, some small candles, an old enamel covered coffee pot, an old roll of shelf paper and a pair of swim fins. A few boxes on the ground held a pair white plush bears, a jigsaw puzzle and an assortment of small Tupperware containers. Nearby in a plastic milk crate was a fully disassembled ceiling fan. I told the seller that ceiling fans were the objects I most commonly see that never sell. He told me that he knew that as he piled some other clutter over the fan.
I had to leave the sale prematurely when Cindy phoned to tell me that someone had seen my lost cat Tony. I bought nothing, then searched for Tony. I did not find the missing feline.
Books arrayed among the dead leaves of late Autumn.
More Xmas items at a cheap price.
Swim fins for sale in the off season.
Box filled with containers.
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3 comments:
The box filled with containers is awesome.
What are your thoughts on using a digital camera/posting to a blog as opposed to other types of documentation?
Your work seems to get lost in the format of low quality digital snapshots, but thinking about something as buried under everything as a yard sale, an obscure blog kind of makes sense.
The photographic work is low res only for web site use. At the exhibit staged in Nashville this summer some of the prints from this series were presented in formats as large as 36" X 48". Due to the conditions I shoot in not everything can work at that level. A lot of my documentation is done without the sellers approval and photographed on the sly. For that I use a high end point and shoot 8 mpg camera. In situations where I am working more openly I use a digital SLR. All the stuff I exhibited at the gallery in Nashville was shot with the smaller point and shoot camera. PArt of the problem with using bigger camera is that it's presence changes the subject matter and appearance ( ie people want to pose, move things around and hide other things from the camera)
I guess I'm feeling the photos may be ultimately insufficient and unsatisfying. Do you collect objects from yard sales? I would always have trouble deciding on the spot at a garage sale, What if the photos serve as something like a catalog. You get the person's contact info and once you've decided what you want you try to track them and the object down. Try out some different solutions to satisfy your yard sale addiction is what I'm saying.
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