SLP Rough Proposal

I have been contemplating my SLP pretty thoroughly, and still do not have any very well-articulated thesis, or cohesive concept but my interests are as follows:

I am very enamored with collections, and intrigued by the phenomenon of collecting as a fairly driving force people's lives. Whether it's having complete sets of silverware, entire discographies, or all the "Polly Pockets" made in 1995, it seems that collections of "stuff" are prevalent in how a person defines his/herself. I, as an excellent consumer, collect tiny statues, but I have have always felt an even stronger fascination with other people's "things". I love going to yard-sales and auctions, and checking out my friends' attics and basements, only stumble on Grandma Lou's collection of tea pots that "we didn't know we still had", etc. I wonder at the compulsion for saving and preserving. The intricacy of storage and preservation has kind of a magical, mystifying power that make collections of trinkets and knick-knacks auspicious for me. And really, why do people collect CERAMIC THIMBLES? Why?

What is the significance of collecting and ordering, outside of a historical framework? I think we just like things, and like displaying them. Neat, ordered things are better things, maybe? Presentation transforms a pile of crap into a person's prized possessions. It makes sense and order.

I began to really analyze themes of presentation and preservation as a possible photobook topic, while discussing them in my Native American Art and Architecture class, because much, if not most of the indigenous people's history that has survived was selected based on the current formal values of the western scholars who were studying them. This fact has really emphasized for me how arbitrary much of aesthetic value is in relation to the actual context of an object, especially in art: whole styles of basketry and ceramics were developed because an anthropologist preferred the look of one basket or vase more than another, and that "one" became the model for a style and period, which contemporary artists now try to recreate. (Obviously, that is a totally naive and loaded statement, but for the purpose of me considering the visual pattern and relation of objects as way to create meaning, it was an important conclusion).

Another reference and inspiration is a photobook lent to me by a friend, which presents a collection of "boring postcards" of bureaucratic architecture in the mid-west (I believe it's called Boring Postcards USA). They are all presented in the same uninteresting way, but some how captivate me in their monotonous rhythm. Similarly, I am very, very drawn to the work of the German, industrial obejectivists Bernard and Hilla Becher.

My initial proposal for the photobook relates to creating some kind of typology of stuff and things, that is aesthetically appealing and simple, perhaps by photographing like objects or people's collections, emphasizing pattern and design. I feel it is interesting and appropriate to play on the idea of the photobook as a collection of photos, making it also into a collection of collections.

As an addendum however, After I definitively committed to this concept, I read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13FOB-consumed-t.html in the New York Times Magazine, and now am sort of stuck as how to modulate this idea to make it my own.