Kim Still
Self Portrait with Stuff
There are things we own, and things that own us, and there are things with which we have a relationship outside the boundaries of ownership. Many of these latter things have layers of meaning, invisible strata of significance unrelated to their original value or purpose. Nobody needs the flight feather of a Lesser Tern, but nobody can replace the memory of the day—the moment—the feather was acquired. Nobody needs a poster from an old exhibit at an art gallery, but nobody can reconstruct the feeling of seeing the poster for the first time. Seeing the poster, seeing the feather, may offer only a pallid comparison to the original moment, but it allows the moment to endure.
All rooms are metaphors for the people who occupy them. The things inside a room are the physical expression of a personality. In many ways, we are the sum of the things we carry with us. There is more to us than a ceramic bell, but without the bell and its manifold associations we are less than what we were.
It’s thoughts and beliefs and memories that fill rooms. Everything else is furniture.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
