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Junk Drawer

Junk Drawer

Name: Junk Drawer
Author: Sander Gilman
ISBN: 9781644534229

What We Leave Behind

Edited by Sander Gilman and Barbara Von Eckardt

Photographer Barbara Von Eckardt

Contributions by Barbara Von Eckardt, Mary Bergstein, Daniel Cavicchi, John Jacob, Margaret Olin, Sander Gilman, Laura Levitt, Ruth Ost, Rhoda Rosen and Amanda Leigh Davis

Published by: University of Delaware Press

Series: Material Culture Perspectives

Imprint: University of Delaware Press

204 Pages, 156.00 × 235.00 × 10.00 mm, 64 color images

Paperback
9781644534229
Published: August 2026

£22.99

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Hardcover
9781644534236
Published: August 2026

£104.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Junk Drawer: What We Leave Behind explores the personal objects that were once treasured by their owners yet were ultimately consigned to online "junk drawer" sales. Photographer and coeditor Barbara Von Eckardt acquired these random assortments from estate remnants on eBay and has documented their contents through evocative, sepia-toned images. In doing so, she has breathed new life into items that the world had deemed valueless, but that hint at the stories and identities of those who once owned them.

In addition to the photographs, Von Eckardt and coeditor Sander L. Gilman have gathered essays by scholars across disciplines, each offering a unique perspective on how such everyday objects can carry profound meaning. The result is a "junk drawer" of reflections, as varied and thought-provoking as the artifacts themselves. It is a moving testament to the emotional and cultural resonance of ordinary things—and an invitation to look more deeply at the objects surrounding us.

Acknowledgments

List of Plates and Figures

Introduction: A Road Map to Junk Drawers, Photographs and Meaning

Barbara Von Eckardt, Artist's Statement

Junk Drawer Photographs

Reading the Junk Drawer Photographs
1. Mary Bergstein, "What We Leave Behind"
2. Daniel Cavicchi, "Estate Curiosities"
3. John P. Jacob, "Ghost Stories"

Thinking about Junk
4. Margaret Olin, "From 'Junk' to 'Junked'"
5. Sander L. Gilman, "From 'Junk to Junque'"
6. Laura Levitt and Ruth Ost, "Ordinary and Extraordinary Objects and their Afterlives"
7. Rhoda Rosen and Amanda Leigh Davis, "Artifacts and Access"

Contributors
Index

Sander L. Gilman is an emeritus professor of liberal arts and sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Barbara Von Eckardt is an emeritus professor of history, philosophy, and the social sciences at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.

With Junk Drawer: What We Leave Behind, Sander Gilman and Barbara Von Eckardt have done a wide array of academic fields and interdisciplinarity an immense service. They demonstrate, creatively, with a focus on photography, how one can turn the (supposedly) normal and unexceptional into an exemplary scholarly project. Oh what we take for granted! Such things—such as the pictures and 'ephemera' in the "junk drawer"—just might be uncut intellectual gems. Gilman and Von Eckhardt have assembled a sparking team in illuminating their rich questions, observations and discussions. - Michael Berkowitz, author of Jews and Photography in Britain (2015)