the furniture

♥  All pieces photographed EXACTLY AS FOUND ON THE STREET.

♥  That’s important to me because I think it says something about the relationship between the furniture and the people who put it there. (For instance, they almost always face the street and very rarely are they covered in any kind of garbage. There’s a strange kind of love happening there.)

 ♥  Photos were taken in Durham Region between 2014 and 2017 and are presented in thrift shop frames… the abandoned embraced by the abandoned. At least they have each other now.

♥  Each of them has also been assigned its own orphaned ‘story’… someone’s true couch memory. I asked dozens of people for theirs. (Read a few here.)

♥  There are 49 photos in the exhibition. Here’s but a sample…

♥  Framed exhibition photos available for sale from $10 to $50 (proceeds to Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge)

(click on photo to enlarge and read)

My mother did all her needlework in an armchair beside the piano.

My dad eating pretzles and watching westerns on Saturday night.

My mom would surprise us with a rented vhs player and a weekend’s worth of movies. We’d spend the whole weekend on the sofa. I don’t even remember leaving to get food.

I don’t think you can use my couch memory. Let’s just say I was about eighteen at the time.

I would sit on my grandmother’s couch every Sunday and check to see if this week my feet might touch the floor.

Looking for something under the sofa, I found an old bowl of milk with a dead mouse in it.

I remember learning that couches are for anyone to sit on, but chairs belong to certain people.

If you recognize any of them, let me know!