Thursday, April 19, 2007

4/14/07 - Finding the Graveyard of Lost Electronics.

Samson St. - Old 4th Ward "Yard Sale?"
This was not your usual yard sale. This was not in my definition a yard sale at all. Here on a side street in the Old Fourth Ward was a large assembly of jumbled clutter taken off a large truck parked nearby and set up in an empty lot. This assortment of electronic and other debris was watched over by a man with an eastern European accent who declined to have his picture taken but he told me it was fine for me to wander about documenting all that I encountered. The dusty and decrepit devices were placed on the ground on tables in this lot. Mixed in with them were games, 8 track tapes, old hand tools, dolls and a few toys. Some strange framed artifacts were in the mix among them a photograph of a military freight plane with a fief and drum band near its open door. Another picture was a strange posed assembly of people costumed as Dickens’s like characters, some were holding geese. The overall state of confusion made the entire jumble of junk and debris a delightful experience. There seemed to be no reason for this stuff being here other than to mystify passing shoppers.
I bought nothing.
Framed photo amid aging electronics.











Artwork found aside truck.













Inexplicable photograph.













View of debris on Samson St.

2 comments:

Josie said...

I just saw your sight and was looking through it. I think the inexplicable photograph looks like a Michaelmas play -- possibly held in the globe theatre in London? That's what it looks like to me, at least.

Tom Zarrilli/Cindy Zarrilli said...

The photo only is inexplicable to the untrained eye. I used inexplicable since it fits the context of this site better. But.. if you look above the doorway in the photograph you will see the name of what appears to be an advertising agency. My theory is that they dressed the entire staff in Dickensian outfits for the company's Xmas card, then sent these images out to clients. Advertising agencies were expected to be hip and wild back in the 60's or 70's when this was taken.