prized possessions

i've been thinking for a while about doing a series of photographs featuring people's most valuable possessions. i know that it's by no means a new concept, but my anthropological/ethnographic penchant seems to express itself in a kind of need to catalogue people. i just thought it would be really interesting to learn about which physical objects are most meaningful to people and why.

i shot these for a mini-theme in my digital class, but i think it may be an ongoing project.

i started by asking my boss, brad slade, and my co-photo-assistant braden duncan, what their most prized possessions were.
the criteria is this: it has to be a physical object, and it has to be truly important to you, like one of the things you would get if your house were burning.

after much consideration, braden decided that his prized posession(s) were his journals, which he's kept religiously for who knows how long (if only i were that disciplined, my posterity might actually have something to read in 100 years).

brad chose his rolleiflex camera, which he has been using to photograph his beautiful kids since they were babies.

as for me, it's hard to say what i would chose. after rescuing my hard drives with all my photos and my file with old letters and important documents and whatnot, i would probably run back into a burning house for either:

-the silver gilded hand mirror that my mom gave me, which she got from the antique shop that the grandmother of her good friend owned. the grandmother of the good friend was named marika, and is my middle namesake.

-a teacup that my godmother gave me. the story is that when she first moved to montreal from the iowa farm where she grew up, she made a friend. that friend gave her this teacup and saucer, which surprised my godmother because she thought that teacups always had to stay in matching sets. her friend taught her to embrace variety and maybe even discord, and i know that meant alot to her. she gave me the teacup over forty years later, the day her friend died.
my godmother is brilliant.

-the little cloissonne bird that my grandfather bought in india for his dad when he was young. he got it back when his dad died, and gave it to me. it's beautiful. i'll photograph it sometime.




what is your most valued object?