Tape
©2005 Craig Ashby
Digital Photograph

These are photos of piles of tape so big you could lose a child or a smaller pet in them. Piles of used packing tape some painted with construction site blue. Massive piles of trash so garish to the eye they commanded me to shoot them.

I love it when something demands this of me. Shoot me. It is a shared connection with an inanimate object that actually appears to be communicating with me on some level.

Oddly this connection to things has been with me since childhood. Whenever we would go on vacation I would demand that all of my toys go. Claiming that the ones who didn’t would be sad about not getting to go on vacation.

This was an honest feeling I had. Not a bratty tantrum. I was never a bratty child at home. Life was too dangerous to be that precious.

It was an innate knowledge that perhaps these things had a spirit. Maybe a spirit I imbued them with or shared with them. But a spirit nonetheless.

I especially felt this today while cleaning a curio cabinet of objects. Each held a memory or loss of memory. I organized each to feature my favorites. Showing every single one love by delicately cleaning them.