Photograph the object, tell it the story, and it stages the thing like an exhibit — velvet, glass case, proper placard. My mother's thimble has never looked so important. Because it is.
Thirty years of teaching literature and I can promise: the back-of-book discussion guide is where conversation goes to die. This builds the questions that make someone put down their wine glass.
The house is too big now. The problem was never the objects — it's that every object has a voice. A system for deciding what stays, what goes, and what gets its story recorded before it goes.
Some of the most important moments of a life have no photograph. Describe one, and get the photo that should exist — on the right film, from the right year.
