The Transience of Things


  • Photographer
    Sarah Girner
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    2009, 2010
  • Technical Info
    Digital C-Print 16" x 16"

This series of images was taken in estate sale houses all over Westchester County, NY. It is an investigation of the final moments of a home and examines the last time the domestic space exists in all its parts with rooms and objects intact in the way the owner intended. A rupture – a death, a divorce – precede the sales. The rooms remain in a suspended state of reality – a time warp – in which the past, the present and the future meet.

Story

The suburbs of Westchester County north of New York City are a private place where everything seems to happen behind closed doors. It is ironic, that the estate sale throws these doors wide open, at a moment where the families that used to inhabit these spaces are at their most vulnerable. A rupture – a death, a divorce – usually precedes the sales. For the two days that the estate sale lasts the rooms exist in a suspended state of reality – a kind of time warp – in which the past, the present and the future meet. Everything is for sale.
In my photographs I set out to document the final moments of these homes. Walking through the estate sale house with my camera I become a sort of archaeologist – digging through the artifacts and remains of family life and coming to conclusions about the lives people lived there. The absence of the owners at the sales only makes their presence more felt. Each picture frame, panel of wallpaper and decorative lampshade has been selected with utmost care. The people that used to live in these homes continue to define the rooms and objects, which have been left behind.

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