Forgotten and For Sale

Tom R. Chambers documents old photographs, in situ. They are “forgotten and for sale” in various antique shops in Texas (Hico, Georgetown, Brenham, Sealy). There is a lack of concern that prevails throughout the documentation. Family members (others) seem to have little regard for personal photo collections – visual histories that recall and validate genealogical connections, not to mention record historical moments in time.

Through arrangements and juxtapositions, the project not only calls attention to this neglect, but also recaptures those proud and familiar moments that comprise familial (otherwise) existence. Many of the images show a collective disregard via multiple photographs that make up the compositions.

What is interesting about this project is the fact that the old photographs are shown in their discarded and sell-mode fashion. Most if not all projects about old photographs show those images themselves – out of context.

Several images follow:

Chambers received this e-mail from a colleague re: his "Forgotten and For Sale" project:

"As I mentioned in my initial note to you, I am fascinated by much of your work. Your exhibition of old photos in thrift shops is a poignant example of how much life for white Americans has changed in my lifetime. In the 1940s and 50s my maternal grandmother could name every person in the tintypes and early photographic prints that were contained in her family scrapbooks. I loved to see the pictures and hear the stories.

The scrapbooks were of no interest to my mother - even the photos of her as a child were included in them. By the time my grandmother was forced into living with my mother, I had taken the scrapbooks to college with me - thus staying their execution for a few years. Eventually I got married and everything I owned had to be shipped to my new home at my husband's Naval station in Puerto Rico. I could not fit the albums into my allotted number of possessions, so I removed the photos from the albums.

Now, more than 50 years later, the photos are safely stored in an acid-free box. My daughter never knew her great-grandmother and never saw the pictures in her grandmother's house, because I had them in a box. We looked at the images a few times when she was a kid, but I didn't have the stories in my head that made the pictures come alive. My daughter considers the pictures part of the contained clutter that occupies a lot of my home - interesting, maybe, but not worth saving.

Now I consider copying the images in Photoshop and making digital collages of them, cutting the images up and making physical collages, or integrating the pictures into scrapbooks of my pictures I've saved of my daughter's family, but she really doesn't even want the scrapbooks. This explains why I identify so much with your exhibit of those photos.

As an undergrad student at the University of Florida I had a fantastic humanities professor who introduced us to the commonly-studied, historically-great artists and to less well-known artists including Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky. It was from this person (I can't remember his name) that I first learned a little about collage and photography. A few years later I took my first of several art photography classes with Jerry Uelsmann followed by some photojournalism classes - changing my entire world. Oh, I got a couple of degrees and worked in jobs ranging from clinical psychology to museum exhibit design, production, and installation, but the magic of photography and other artwork stayed in my head and sometimes ran wild in my studio space.

Your on-line gallery has again changed my world, moving me from moments of 'what am I doing working on this research project? I should be creating art!' to 'There is no point in trying to create art; Tom Chambers has already used all of the ideas I've had in my recent five years of ignoring my art and my studio space!' " (Cathe Bedard)