Hasta La Ideas

Lisa Kereszi’s photographic book on family and what’s been thrown away

Photographer Lisa Kereszi has released “Joe’s Junk Yard,” a new photography book about her family’s junk business. In a documentary style similar to her Governor’s Island project, Kereszi records the final years of Joe’s Junk Yard, a business started by her grandfather, Joe Kereszi, in 1949. Located in southeastern Pennsylvania, the yard was a museum for American detritus. Reflecting on her father’s livelihood and her mother’s antique business, Kereszi writes, “I was surrounded by junk.”

The book starts with Kereszi’s grandfather in the form of his collected scrapbooks. Repurposing various materials to create his work, Kereszi explains that her grandfather’s obsession represents a person coming to grips with injustice in the world. “My grandfather’s scrapbooks were something else entirely, works that clearly fall into the category of outsider art,” Kereszi writes. “The loose, tattered books were made of supermarket-bought adhesive-bound pads of multi-colored construction paper.” Beyond the scraps, Joe’s Junk Yard chronologically tracks Kereszi’s documentation of the operation from her high school days through graduate school.

Photographer Larry Fink introduces the book, writing, “A junkyard is not an end run for matter; it is the beginning of a new condition for the curious, cultured and coincidental mind.” For Kereszi, the aesthetic of the yard started with people. Photographing her family around the yard with a student’s 35mm camera, Kereszi began the long process of documenting Joe’s Junk Yard. As the project evolved, Kereszi focused more on still objects and the iconic materials.

“Later, the work starts to get more still and centered on these things that I’m finding and pointing to as things of importance,” Kereszi tells CH. “An engine that looks like a heart or a transmission on the ground that starts to look like an elephant’s trunk—things that start to turn into something else by me focusing in on them.” Part of her motivation for recording the junkyard had to do with the failing business and her uncle’s suicide, with the physical objects acting as a manifestation of this loss.

It would be a disservice to dismiss Kereszi’s work as merely deadpan glimpses at a familiar subject, with a promient narrative of changing values and the abandoment of the DIY lifestyle shining through the documentation. “It was a part of life that you don’t throw stuff away when you’re done with it. You reuse it, and you fix it. Whereas today, we live in a much more disposable culture,” says Kereszi.

Kereszi wraps up her essay on Joe’s Junk Yard with a reflection on objects and inheritance: “I’ve inherited a lot from the place, from the hood ornaments pried from cars and signage stripped from walls to the ritual of hiding baseball bats behind doorjambs. But I’ve also inherited the passion for scavenging, for collecting, photographically and otherwise, and a constant need to feel that rare moment of discovery of treasure among the trash, or better, of true meaning and transcendence amid the chaos, pain, and banality of life.”

“Joe’s Junk Yard” is available from Artbook and on Amazon. See more images of the book as well as image credits after the jump.

Images courtesy of the artist and the Yancy Richardson Gallery

(from top)

The Office, 2002

Joe Jr.’s girlfriend Patty and Evans with truck bed, 1998

Wise man figure in junk car, 1993

Eloyse and Joe Jr. smoking, 1999

Joe Jr. and Patty in emptied-out office, last week open, summer, 2003

“Yard Sale” sign with junk, Media, PA, 2009

The complete, interactive history of a literary legend

Charles Dickens is like the Madonna of the literary world. Two centuries later, the progressive British novelist remains as relevant and legendary today as he was at the height of his career. Marking the bicentennial of his birth this year is a series of events around London, dubbed Dickens 2012, and a new book by Dickens’ great-great-great-granddaughter Lucinda Dickens Hawksley.

“Charles Dickens” is an interactive reference guide to the notable author’s entire life, shedding light on his early years and his first work of fiction—a play called “Miznar, the Sultan of India” that he penned at age nine—and working through to the end of his life, when he passed away while finishing “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” at 58-years-old. The book is packed with printed materials pulled from Dickens’ personal archive, which are tucked away between the pages in fold-out inserts. Family photographs, manuscripts proofed by Dickens, marriage certificates and more make up the assortment of rarely or never-before-seen documents included in the comprehensive tome.

The book also delves into Dickens’ role as a social commentator, which undoubtedly grew from his upbringing. Much of his work, like “Olivier Twist” or “Nicholas Nickleby” for example, reflected his interest in and understanding of the cultural injustices of his time, although he tried to keep his own past experiences hidden. His father went to debtors’ prison and as a child Dickens had to work as a laborer at a blacking factory—a time that had a huge impact on his writing and overall outlook on life. In an unfinished autobiography, he wrote, “I do not write resentfully or angrily: for I know all these things have worked together to make me what I am: but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back.”

The ultimate Dickens compendium covering his career as a prolific writer and budding actor, “Charles Dickens” offers a fresh perspective on the complexity of his character. The book is brimming with illustrations and photographs that reveal the essence of his life during the Victorian Era, allowing for a full grasp of the events that inspired much of his literary works.

“Charles Dickens” sells online from Amazon and Carlton Books.