Photographs and Numbers

I've been a bit obsessed with pairs of things for some time now, and for the first time I've taken some photographs of my own, instead of just appropriating other people's! I bought a bunch of little things I intended to use in the constructions I've been making with cabinet cards, but then I began to play with them and pair them up, discovering the way the objects changed in feeling-tone, depending on the partner they were paired with.

Here they all are, lined up in the studio:

Last fall, when I began to collect anonymous 20th century snapshots, I made a piece with a sequence of five photographs, beginning with one woman and increasing the number of (all female) people depicted.

I find that five people in a photograph seems to be the limit of the number of people that I can look at and still see individuals. A larger group becomes like a class picture.

I bought some new snapshots when I was in New Orleans, and have begun to combine them with my New England snapshots in sequences of five. Here's the first sequence of photos that seem to have a narrative or story associated with them. I am planning to make five such sequences, and mount them in a 5x5 grid.