not naming any names

paper, tissue paper, board, vintage magazine illustration, vintage lingerie shoulder strap

Lately I've thought a lot about the act of carrying someone with you. In the past people wore medallions with photos, carried with them a lock of someone's hair or wore a piece of jewellery made out of hair, had personal items with engravings. All in all, memorabilia was something entirely different from what it is these days. I love all those little things that people keep just to be reminded of someone, how they symbolically take their loved one wherever they go. Of course there are cell phones that store all the photos you want them to, and more, but I personally can't do any of that. My phone does have a camera but I don't know how to use it or how to send photos from my phone to another or how to get the photos out of the camera and I simply can't be bothered to learn. And most of all, I don't want to. I don't want my phone to be my everything. I want to need other things too. I want to wear my watch and remember how I got it from my parents and how I still don't quite know what time it is when it's around 11 or 2 because the watch face is all weird and has too few little stripey things. When I want to take photos, I also want to feel the weight of my camera and hear the (digital) sound of the shutter and think how amazing it is to be able to take photos with this great thing called a camera. I don't want my phone to play music. Actually, I usually don't even want my phone to ring. I want to stop compressing life into this handy portable form that is now available. What I want instead, I can't really tell, but there is something very appealing in the memorabilia of the old days. Those items are so terribly real compared to pretty much anything.

(The shoulder strap came from a small collection of vintage lace I acquired in Berlin. I could not bear to part with any of Saima's old things. Because, you know, sentimental value...)