Everything Must Go entered its public life as an Instagram account during the summer of 2020.

I had been downloading photographs from online estate sales for a while, looking at how

unknown people pictured their unwanted belongings. At first, I shared these images with some

friends, a small penpal circle who shared my fascination. These friends—a writer, a painter, a

photographer, an editor —were all familiar with notions of aspirational presentation, picturing

what we might desire. These images, however, veered dizzily from the beautiful to the abject to

the inscrutable.

Magazine photos and estate sales were an ordinary part of my childhood. My father worked at

the Conde Nast publishing plant in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. The plant built in the 1920s has

long since closed but two granite obelisks still standing on the main road-- inscribed with the

titles Vogue and House & Garden-- mark the property. My mother was a hoarder who haunted

thrift stores and estate sales. Years later, when I published an essay questioning my mother’s

dogged faith in thrifting, I received an explanation worthy of a tabloid talk show: since my

mother had grown up during the Depression, she was stocking up on everything she had missed.

But how many laundry mangles and ping pong tables could anybody possibly miss? I wasn’t

buying it.

For years, my work has been actively engaged with images, it’s the constant thread in an

otherwise untraditional resume-- sole employee in a vintage photography gallery, picture

researcher in the pre-digital era, co-editor of an alternative art publication, design writer for

‘shelter’ magazines, and Ansel Adams Research Fellow at the Center for Creative Photography

It has always been about looking and reading.

These found photographs are about intention, not inventory. They portray many things—the

passage of time, admiration, design choices, loss, rejection, desire, and cultural history and

remind us, finally, that Everything Must Go.