I have been working on iterations of The Catalog Project since 2009. The most recent edition of this work resulted in an unsolicited direct mailing of what appears at first glance to be a mail-order catalog. If not tossed aside with the recycling, recipients find subtle disruptions to the expected lexicon of the typical catalog: the familiar beats of longing for connection, to be worthy of love, and to experience the beautiful life. In my catalog it is particularly difficult to ascertain what could be for sale. Instead of artful copy, it is intimate excerpts from a personal essay along with photographs of my daughter (with appropriate measures to protect her privacy). The essay centers around a public track meet and explores themes of disability, miscarriage, and motherhood.

Catalogs shouldn’t exist in today’s digital world. They are a relic of the past. Yet they persist. Our dreams and desire for comfort feel as potentially graspable as the glossy paper in our hands. The catalog is a powerful and persistent artifact at the intersection of public and private desire. This project interrogates the intimate ritual that the catalog represents. It is a fertile medium for exploring the universal yearning for connection that retail culture exploits. My work fills in the gaps that the catalog editors left out: the jagged, rocky paths of the real pursuit of connection.

As an object, the catalog offers a unique opportunity to explore the reciprocity between the individual and mass culture. It flirts with the illusions we chase but never consummate, and the actual connections we may find in the pursuit. A catalog can showcase the vulnerability we feel and the inescapable role physical objects take in crafting our personhood.

In the second edition of the mailed catalog I am working exclusively with film and wet plate processes centered around a new essay exploring ideas of home.