Junk Drawer: What We Leave Behind explores the personal objects that were once treasured by their owners yet were ultimately consigned to online “junk drawer” sales. Photographer and coeditor Barbara Von Eckardt acquired these random assortments from estate remnants on eBay and has documented their contents through evocative, sepia-toned images. In doing so, she has breathed new life into items the world had deemed valueless, but that hint at the stories and identities of those who once owned them.

In addition to the photographs, Von Eckardt and coeditor Sander L. Gilman have gathered essays by scholars across disciplines, each offering a unique perspective on how such everyday objects can carry profound meaning. The result is a “junk drawer” of reflections, as varied and thought-provoking as the artifacts themselves. It is a moving testament to the emotional and cultural resonance of ordinary things—and an invitation to look more deeply at the objects surrounding us.
 

SANDER L. GILMAN is Emeritus Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

BARBARA VON ECKHARDT is Emeritus Professor of History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. 

Acknowledgements

List of Plates and Figures

Introduction: A Road Map to Junk Drawers, Photographs and Meaning

Barbara Von Eckardt, Artist's Statement

Junk Drawer Photographs

Reading the Junk Drawer Photographs
1. Mary Bergstein, “What We Leave Behind”
2. Daniel Cavicchi, “Estate Curiosities”
3. John P. Jacob, “Ghost Stories”

Thinking about Junk
4. Margaret Olin, “From ‘Junk’ to ‘Junked’”
5. Sander L. Gilman, "From ‘Junk to Junque’”
6. Laura Levitt and Ruth Ost, “Ordinary and Extraordinary Objects and their Afterlives”
7. Rhoda Rosen and Amanda Leigh Davis, “Artifacts and Access”

Contributors
Index