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Trying to get back on track with this story. Jumping ahead to the idea of Our Heroine discovering that other people share her new obsession, though maybe not in quite the same way.
There were plenty of pictures of the stuff. Some I recognized from the catalogue, some not. The boards weren’t set up to allow much in the way of comment or text, and the endless procession of mute images left me frustrated, until I noticed in one artful still-life of mismatched silverware with sisal rope wrapped around the handles, a reflection. Too distorted by the bowl of a tarnished spoon to make out much detail, but plainly the photographer and her camera. So some of these tableaux were the work of enthusiastic amateurs.
Once you knew what to look for, it became easy to spot the photographs taken by fans from the ones in the catalogue. This was a conversation, then – one without words. Some of the pictures were simple recreations of the catalogue pages – these I judged to be early works. Then a fork with a single bent tine began appearing in several of the photos. I guessed that this was a sort of in-joke or mascot to the photographers. Maybe a key.
I pulled my dresser out of the bedroom and up to the south-facing window of my living room, and draped and old cotton sun-dress across the top. The paint had dried on my new/old chair, so I set it in front of the dresser and, crouching, peered at the set-up through the rungs of the chair back. It was beginning to look good, but it needed a focal point. Getting a fork from the kitchen drawer, I gripped one of the tines with a pair of tweezers and bent it until it looked like the forks on the website. Placed it off-centre on the dresser top and checked the view through the chair back again. By tilting my webcam I was able to take several shots of the arrangement; simple photo-editing software let me crop out the parts of my room that didn’t fit the mood. I selected the image that seemed to me to be most dramatic, made an account and posted it. And waited.
There were plenty of pictures of the stuff. Some I recognized from the catalogue, some not. The boards weren’t set up to allow much in the way of comment or text, and the endless procession of mute images left me frustrated, until I noticed in one artful still-life of mismatched silverware with sisal rope wrapped around the handles, a reflection. Too distorted by the bowl of a tarnished spoon to make out much detail, but plainly the photographer and her camera. So some of these tableaux were the work of enthusiastic amateurs.
Once you knew what to look for, it became easy to spot the photographs taken by fans from the ones in the catalogue. This was a conversation, then – one without words. Some of the pictures were simple recreations of the catalogue pages – these I judged to be early works. Then a fork with a single bent tine began appearing in several of the photos. I guessed that this was a sort of in-joke or mascot to the photographers. Maybe a key.
I pulled my dresser out of the bedroom and up to the south-facing window of my living room, and draped and old cotton sun-dress across the top. The paint had dried on my new/old chair, so I set it in front of the dresser and, crouching, peered at the set-up through the rungs of the chair back. It was beginning to look good, but it needed a focal point. Getting a fork from the kitchen drawer, I gripped one of the tines with a pair of tweezers and bent it until it looked like the forks on the website. Placed it off-centre on the dresser top and checked the view through the chair back again. By tilting my webcam I was able to take several shots of the arrangement; simple photo-editing software let me crop out the parts of my room that didn’t fit the mood. I selected the image that seemed to me to be most dramatic, made an account and posted it. And waited.
