Keepsakes of Strangers

A feature of our consumer-oriented culture is the ceaseless acquisition of things. After a period of use, long or short, a thing may be set aside but not discarded. Ultimately it ends up in an estate sale, a thrift store, or a landfill. Malcolm Easton gathers these displaced things and arranges them for the camera. Imagining he has been granted a family's accumulations over decades, he combines old objects with new, and familiar things with those whose purpose is now a mystery. Bright colors emerge from muted backgrounds. Shapes and textures stimulate the tactile sense, evoking the physical reality of the subjects. Easton's studio photography uses natural light exclusively. He illuminates each scene using a handheld mirror to direct beams of sunlight into a shadowed room. With references to Joseph Cornell as well as classic Dutch and Flemish still lifes, his images invite us to examine our own store of objects, some that we still possess and others that reside only in memory.