Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Photography & its cathartic ability during the strenuous times of Spring Cleaning


I am currently in the middle of the long and painful process of Spring cleaning (made more painful due to the fact that I have not Spring cleaned for many a many Springs gone by). Some may say I'm a hoarder, to which I say "I'm a sentimental sap, that's all." But when it's time, it's time (or it's time when Sharon says it's time and makes me pull everything out *weep*). One technique that I've interestingly found quenches my thirst for sentimentality is photography. Above is a picture of lipglosses/lipsticks/lipbalms, all of which are no longer functional however have demanded keeping due to one memory or another. Photographing my objects, archiving them (horcruxing them if you will, splitting their soul and capturing them in a photo) has turned out to be powerfully cathartic. My fear is that I will forget the age, the lifestyle, the events for which the objects are zeitgeitsts. However through a photograph I find that their embedded associations transfer into the new medium - one digital JPEG. Now that takes up much less space! That is, at least until the hard drive Spring clean, but that's a whole other story...


EDIT: upon further pondering, I realised that I have been photographing my sentimental objects for quite some time before throwing them out. Such as my 'Ode to Dancing Shoes and Dancing Songs' series here.

1 comment:

  1. I'm taking all of January off and I'm going to Spring clean my house like nobodies business - all the clutter is doing my head in. Interesting that you like to photograph your stuff before you chuck it out.

    ReplyDelete