If you’ve been here long enough you probably know that I’ve been doing an art substack where I share my strange doodles each week for years now (and I’m going to do at least one more year because I’m still loving it) but I decided to start a second one to share my very weird hyperfixation hobby I’ve been doing for decades.
Quick note: If you don’t know how substack works, here’s the basics: It’s website where I publish stuff and you get it sent to you in an email. If you want in, just click here and enter any email address in the box that you want it to go to. It’ll ask what kind of subscriber you want to be and you can totally subscribe for free (most people are free members) and you’ll get an email from me whenever I post. You can also be a paid subscriber for $5 a month if you want to help support my habit (thank you!). There is also the option to be a “founding member” for $100 to support my bigger time-travel projects and if you sign up for that one I’ll mail you an antique photo from my own collection as a thank you. You can leave comments on the webpage if you want or just get the emails and consider it a penpal you never have to respond to.
If you want to see what all of this is about before deciding if you want to get emails about it (very fair…it’s not for everyone) here is the whole first post. 🙂
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The very last thing that I need right now is another project.
I already have dozens half-started or waiting optimistically for future-Jenny to turn her hand to them. But there is one that has been speaking to me for a very long time and it is one that I can’t seem to break myself of, so perhaps there is a reason.
I’ve collected old photographs for over 30 years. I pick through stacks and stacks in estate sales and flea markets to find the ones that speak to me. I use them to create strange photo albums that tell stories without words. Beauty and horror and joy and longing…moments caught on paper that often last longer than we do.
It’s a private sort of art project…not private because I’m embarrassed of it, but private because I don’t really have anyone to pull my albums out with and look with a magnifying glass for all of the tiny clues hidden that help to make up a life. (Except my family, who are also collectors and will humor me for hours whenever they come to visit.)
Sometimes I’m able to identify the people and send the images off to relatives who were unaware the photos even existed, sometimes seeing their ancestors for the first time. And I learn so much about them at the same time.
For example, last week I bought a box of ephemera from the 1940s and1950s at an online auction. Photos and letters and telegrams and clippings. I was able to identify the person who it had belonged to (George Mooreman) and found out that he was an actor and later a college drama and writing professor.
From his Imdb I found his son, who was very young when his father died in the 1960s and I was able to mail him a giant stack of family photos that had been lost to the universe. (After I assured him this wasn’t a scam and that I’d happily send it all to him for free.)
From him: “Thank you. Serendipity is god’s way of staying anonymous.”
In that same box of ephemera was a 70-year-old letter to George from a mother who was concerned about her son, Terry, one of George’s students in 1956. She thanked him for reaching out and told him that she was very worried because Terry was leaning toward joining the ministry and she had two sons in the ministry but that Terry did not have the right temperament for it, and she thought that this wrong path might be making him physically ill. From the letter: “He is a spitfire at times and stubborn. There – you have it. He does love drama.” She asked George to help in any way he could to guide him into a path that would bring him joy.
Luckily, she gave her full name so I was able to find out what happened to Terry. Turns out, he became Terry Kay, an emmy-winning screenwriter, author and well-known drama critic.
Terry had passed a few years ago but I saw that the Georgia Writers Museum had an exhibit on his life so I reached out and they put me in touch with Terry’s daughter who was thrilled to have her grandmother’s letter for her father’s archives. I just dropped it in the mail a minute ago with this letter:
I love these stories.
They remind me how interconnected we are. They inspire me and make me feel less alone during times when my anxiety makes it too hard to be with other people. Somehow these people become friends to me (even the anonymous ones I’ll never able to identify) and I often learn so much about the past from these strange rabbit-holes.
Sorry…I’m rambling.
Anyway, one of my favorite things to collect is tintypes. You may have seen them at antique stores or flea markets…small images printed directly onto pieces of metal in the latter half of the 1800s. There is something about a tintype…so clear and sharp-edged that it’s as if you could walk into the image…as if a tiny hole opened up in the past that lets me peek in…a small bit of time travel.
Most tintypes are unlabeled. You can’t really write on metal and the paper frames that once surrounded them are often missing. And so their names and stories are lost to time. Often these small images are the only thing that still exists of them…the last bit left of them that says, “I was here. I was real.”
I’ve collected lots of tintypes but I also have a fair amount of their earlier sisters, daguerreotypes or ambrotypes, images printed on glass or silver-plated copper in the 1830s-1860s. The finest ones are often too expensive for me but I’m learning how to repair damaged ones…how to take apart the cases without exposing the pieces to the air which could cause them to oxidize and disappear forever.
One of my favorite parts of the process is removing the image from the case to find that sometimes they have left behind notes, names, locks of hair from secret lovers, a gold coin, another image hidden away, a secret love note to the person they have sent their image to. I take these little pieces and make up stories about each of the people who I rescue from the ether. I give them magic, or revenge, or power. I give them a little life in exchange for the glimpse they give me through this small hole in time.
It’s a strange hobby, but one that settles my nerves…one that reminds me that there have been joys and sadness and worries and hope in the images that stretch back almost 200 years. It reminds me that we are not alone…that our fears and joys are not new…that we are more resilient than we think…that we can learn from the past if we choose to. I sit on the couch with a cat on my lap as I organize photos and try to keep them from disappearing forever.
And I thought that perhaps others might be just as fascinated as I am and so I decided to make this project…of sharing some of my favorite pieces along with either the story I learn from researching them, or if they have none with a story I give them.
So if you want to subscribe to this weird hyper fixation of mine, I will send you (at least once a week but possibly more) an email with a photo and a tiny story. You can join for free to see almost everything, or you can be a paid subscriber for $5 a month (that’s the cheapest substack allows) if you want to support my weird habit and also be able to always leave comments and join the community each week.
And if you want to help fund the crazier parts of this project where I buy boxes of mysterious things to research, then you can become a founding member for $100 for the full year. And if you become a founding member, I will personally mail you one of my vintage photographs from my personal collection (as long as you live in the US because I can’t figure out how to do international shipping- sorry!) and you can adopt them as a found family member of your own. (Check your email if you’re a founder because I’ll be emailing you for your address soon.)
I have so many pieces and histories and mysteries I can’t wait to show you.
I hope you love them as much as I do.
~ Jenny, amateur time traveler
So if you want in on this weird adventure…click here. (Also, I never do anything with your email addresses except send the posts that I write and you can unsubscribe at any time.)
