Ongoing - Second Hand Living

For a several years I've been working on a project loosely based on the second-hand economy. One of my hobbies is buying and selling antiques. I eventually decided to turn my camera on some of the more interesting people I have met.

This is Joe Pick.

I first met Joe at a yard sale he was having on the south shore of Massachusetts. The sale advertised tons of merchandise to pick through. I showed up and was amazed at what he had on his lawn. Boxes and boxes of, stuff. Photos, books, magazines, trinkets, buttons, electronics. There was also furniture and artwork. It was overwhelming. I ended up at a few more of his sales and began asking him about his business. It turns out he is a one man clean out team.

Joe is called in when a home needs to be cleared fast. Sometimes it is because the owner passed away and the family is selling it, sometimes it's a foreclosure, and sometimes it is an older couple that has finally decided to downsize. Joe is usually brought in after the bulk of the items have either been moved or sold off at an estate sale. What is left, the 'stuff' accumulated by people over the years, is Joe's responsibility.  The majority of what is left is basically trash. Broken items, old papers, moldy books. However a lot of that 'stuff' still holds some value. It is literally a case of one man's trash is another man's treasure. Most of it will only sell for a few dollars but it adds up fast when you are cleaning out a few houses a week. Joe used to sell off the remainders from his clean outs at his epic yard sales. But he has moved away from that practice and now uses more traditional retail outlets like antique and collectible shops.

This small series is from an antique farm house on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The house had been sold by the older owners and needed to be cleaned out. Most of the major items had already been sold at an estate sale, so whatever was left was up to Joe to deal with. When I was there two women were looking for some items for their new up-cycled furniture store.

Work in progress

I've been laid up recovering from some surgery for the past three plus weeks and I have been a lazy photographer and haven't shot so much as an instagram photo. Actually that's not true, I did take a few photos of my cats with my pad. I am embarrassed to admit that I have even used my ipad camera but at least it was for cat photos.

I wanted to share two frames from an ongoing series that I started last year. In short the idea is to focus on 'thrift culture'. People that buy and sell used items and all that it entails. My focus so far has been on a few proprietors of junk shops or in one case a junk yard. They usually sell older items, maybe considered antique but if they are antique they have not aged well. Really fun to look around in.

This is Barbara.

She has been getting by selling stuff from her south coast "junky-junk" shop for over twenty years now. Don't let her nickname for the shop fool you, the place has some awesome stuff, you just have to look.  And she doesn't just deal in in antiques and decorative items.  She also buys and sells cars and anything else she can make some money on.

 

Meet Chuck.

His yard in Roxbury isn't open every day, usually just in the warmer weather.  He owns the land and plans on giving it to his son so that he can either sell it or develop it.  In the meantime he sells furniture, appliances, and various other items from the land.  Fascinating guy who used to run a huge furniture store in the area.

Life is beautiful.

'Hello friend. Life is beautiful"

It's the first thing you hear when you walk into Stan's junk store in Wareham, Massachusetts. You turn the corner and there he is, sitting in his lounge chair with his winter coat, and winter mitts on, trying to watch a movie on the beat up television in the corner. Then the inevitable question "Whatcha lookin' for?" in his Minnesota accent. I first bumped into Stan in my travels while scouring junk, antique and thrift stores for whatever catches my eye. It's a hobby of mine. Stan's store is classic. A random assortment of items he has gathered over the years, most tucked away in a corner, gathering dust, and not worth all that much. But that's what makes it so fascinating. You can spend a long time getting lost in the drawers filled with trinkets. I spent a little time chatting with Stan one day.

He told me that he grew up on a farm in Minnesota.  After awhile he began traveling and selling ice fishing decoys that he had collected over the years from folk artists.  He became pretty well known in the world of fishing decoys which are very collectible.  On one of his trips he found himself in the Wareham and Buzzards Bay area and as he put it "My truck broke down so I stayed" 

He used to have a bigger shop in Buzzards Bay but that has since closed down.  He now spends each day in his little shop on the bridge trying to make a few bucks a day to get by.