ABSTRACT
Introduction Objects are import ant to people – as Miller (2013) has aptly shown, objects bring comfort and meaning to indi vidu als in their every day interac tions. In this chapter, I will be consid er ing how we can photo graph both single objects and collec tions of objects in a mean ing ful and useful way – or, to borrow from Collier and Collier (1986) – a cultural invent ory. Collier and Collier’s version of a cultural invent ory was more literal, however, as their focus was on using photo graphy as a tool of memory in this case, to remove the need for exhaust ive textual cata loguing. In this case, we are not simply using photo graphy in this way (although the
by-product of our work does yield a useful set of images detail ing these things), but also to expose the signi fic ance, emotions and mean ings that indi vidu als accord to these objects. Some of this has already been dealt with in Chapter 4 on space and how to photo graph objects in space, but this chapter extends the argu ment to look more closely at the objects them selves.
