I recently thrifted a hoard of decaying vintage photo slides. Going through them felt voyeuristic and vaguely archeological: seeing snapshots of a stranger’s life from almost sixty years ago—every slide contained a tiny ghost.
While fiddling with the scanner, I accidentally dropped two slides on top of each other, and my scanner conjured a haunting double image. So I tried it again. A random remix, every time, reshuffling random moments someone else threw away.
The imaginary voice of Janet Yellen hissed, “Why do something so unproductive and indulgent as that? Shouldn’t you be more actively monetizing!?!?”
Well, lots of reasons, Janet:
1: Because playing with trash yields all sorts of treasure.
There’s freedom in knowing you can’t mess up something that nobody else cares about. If you’re okay with the idea of “nothing to lose” you make room for plenty of neat surprises. If the media is yours to warp and change and scar and use up, you freely can—and nobody will get mad about it. Write in the fancy notebook you’re keeping pristine and let your paints gets muddy.
2: Because someone else’s old tricks are your new adventures.
I know double-exposures aren’t some new discovery, but every image I found was new to me, and so making more of them was satisfying. The more I saw, the more I realized there was a lot I hadn’t seen, in this way, before.
3: Because if you always do what you already did, you’ll only get what you already have.
I usually work with words as anchors or way-finding objects when I make any kind of art. Having no words to use as my media-crutch, I had to let the pictures tell the stories for me. It took a lot of restraint not to title these with descriptions I knew would only limit their meanings.
4: Because there’s nothing more YOU than your experiences.
While a lot of the images my scanner fed my eyes felt surreal, I was comforted that they were all organically assembled, and not AI. There’s a comforting sense in being the creature who generates, instead of the consumer that observes.
5: Because practice makes perception.
Just as a book has a different interpretation in the mind of every reader, these images told me things, and prompted feelings for me, that they will never say to anyone else. When involve yourself, you change the value and meaning of the object in front of you.
6: Because seeing novelties helps you keep your mind pliable.
As I scanned in images, patterns emerged. The landscapes felt centered in the same ways, the compositions echoed each other. Forcing the snapshots to work in opposition to their original orientations and goals, they became less obvious and more artful. Original intentions always matter less (and are less interesting than) eventual outcomes.
7: Because seeing things makes you value things.
It’s impossible to not gently handle these slides. The time they’ve existed makes old artifacts objects of reverence, and the places and people they reference became things I was protective of, even as I smashed them into each other with light. I’ll be sure to store them in a clean, dry, and reverent location.
8: Because what you play with might as well matter, if only to you.
As each slide existed as both my new treasure and someone else’s trash, the idea of relative value kept oozed out of every scanner vibration—what makes anything worth anything anyway? It’s eyes-of-the-beholder subjectivity from factory to landfill. And there must be millions upon millions of these slides buried under used diapers and junk mail across the world.
9: Because it’s not about the work, it’s about doing it.
Is a collection of stuff a legacy? Or is the legacy of the photographers their ability to look and admire? I hope that the practice is more valuable than the product, that making a life is the grander art project embodied in slivers in every roll of film.
10: Because it’s fun when shit gets weird.
And just when I’m getting all emotional about the values of memories and the disposability of lives, serendipity gets silly. Sometimes, seeing the ghost of a long-dead poodle peering out from a landscape that probably doesn’t exist anymore is all you need to giggle and keep fiddling along. There’s always room for levity, thankfully.
Love this - thank you for sharing the art and the writing. 1, 3, and 7 are my favorite exposures of the batch, all for different reasons.
Thank you for noticing!