A long time ago I had the privilege to photograph a farm in North Dakota. As we went through the farm we found a veritable treasure trove of things from the past. In one room there was a stack of shirt cardboards a foot tall. A shirt cardboard could be cut down and used to patch a hole in the sole of a shoe. A few days later we pulled open the door of an old shed and found a beautiful old single speed bike…leaning against a Model A Ford. I was told that farmers never throw things out.
Years later when we had to sell my in-law’s house we found similar caches of seemingly odd ball things held onto for years. I never could separate the underlying causes either from living through the Great Depression when everything was used up, re-purposed and recycled or whether being fifty miles from the nearest town meant that you kept everything because you never knew what emergency would be solved by something that you did not throw away.
Sometimes we are so intent on photographing something we lose the ability to think about the significance of the objects to their owners.
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