Forget Me Not

When we die, what happens to our most prized possessions? In the case of an estate sale, a home and its contents, an entire life, is for sale. Anyone can rifle through what once were private spaces—the bedroom closet, the medicine cabinet; even the underwear drawer—nothing is sacred.

An estate sale is a space in transition—no longer inhabited but not yet disassembled and abandoned. Some of the homes are destined to be sold, gutted and remodeled; while others will be pulled down to make room for condos, removing all evidence of what was once there. The setting for this project ranges from turn-of-the-century brownstones to 1950s bungalows, but they housed a generation that was less transitory. Unlike today, where on average families move at least every 10 years, individuals of this era spent their entire adult lives in one home.

There's a sense of permanence to the spaces I photograph, many of their previous owners were first-time home buyers, who took pride in where they lived. In my exploration of the basements and attics of homes across Chicago and its suburbs, I've discovered interiors that have remained unchanged for decades; here several generations entertained at Tiki bars, wallpapered the ceiling of their bathrooms and selected kitchen design schemes of orange and avocado green. The experience of these settings are mediated through memory—of childhood or visits to grandma’s—and through pop culture, reruns of T.V. shows like I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch. Domestic settings, unlike idealized Hollywood sets that never age, experience the ravages of day-to-day life. The worn surfaces and fading of the once vibrant colors reference the aging of the generation and allude to a presence now absent from these rooms.

At estate sales, treasure seekers encounter once-beloved personal and utilitarian objects that lose their original meaning when stripped of their context. Through my arrangement of the spaces and possessions found in each home, I counteract the impersonal nature of an estate sale and the way it distances us from death. Attention is paid to physical markings of the environment and the accumulation and age of items to help construct a past life and allude to the passage of time. As members of this generation pass away, their personal history becomes commodified; but this project counteracts the disposability of an accumulated life by prolonging the existence of the domestic environment and the items it contains.