Art & the History of Art Justin Kimball: Pieces of String

For four years Justin Kimball photographed in abandoned homes, hotels and buildings in the Northeastern United States. For much of this work he accompanied his brother Doug, an auctioneer, into the houses of the deceased or dispersed. While Doug cleared these spaces of items for potential resale, Justin sought within them the evidence of an individual’s life. Photographing “the smallest objects (a note, a box of hair pins, a stain on a pillow),” Kimball re-imagines their existence and relationship to the absent owners. “I use the camera’s descriptive power and the photographic illusion of truth to create the narrative and inspire feelings about its subject. The resulting photographs are my perception of what happened in those spaces: Who lived there? What was hidden and what was seen?” Justin’s 60 color photographs from this body of work are explorations of the minutiae of everyday life—a contemplation of our brief and humble legacies before they are cleaned up and cast to the wind.  Included in this volume is a booklet of Doug Kimball’s evocative writing about his own experiences with the emotional storm that surrounds these objects, their owners and beneficiaries.