Afterword | The Little Things: Sam Davis, 2014
“They lived in a wooden box under the table of the shop. Worn smooth with a warm patina from years of thoughtful use these shipwright tools from another century were all I knew of him. Him-being my grandfather. He was born in 1886 and I, in 1975. We entered the world almost 90 years apart. This distance in time was far too substantial to bridge except through the experience of “things”. Things. Objects. Stuff. Objects of all kinds are often the only connection we have to people, especially people we don’t know well, or in some cases at all. The stuff around us presents the casual viewer with clues to who we are. Our choices of commodities that we purchase represent our interests, our passions and often our deepest secrets. To the disinterested it is just the detritous of being human. To others these objects hold almost sacred value with even the most mundane object representing a profound memory or connection to a loved one. We all know, or will know, the feeling of going through someone’s possessions when they are gone. But what if we don’t know them at all? What if we don’t know our own selves as well as we would like to? Looking at the images in this project raises all these questions and more. The attempt to know someone and in turn ourself is perhaps one of the greatest endeavors within the creative practice. I was immediately drawn to these images and what they represent. The struggle to know and understand someone through things…..”
