The Object of My Affection: the Art of Things and Their Meaning

Like many others, one of my earliest memories of poetry was Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” I was too young to understand anything about the world, but this line struck me deeply and stayed with me for life: “And the sun pours down like honey on our Lady of the Harbour/ And she shows you where to look/ Among the garbage and the flowers./ There are heroes in the seaweed.”

I was moved by the idea that treasures of the human spirit lurked in the detritus and the darkness, running parallel to the suggestion that jewels glittered in garbage. It’s a theme that runs through my own art and writing to this day.

What poetry could better encapsulate the peculiar passion people have for thrifting, mudlarking, flea markets, and collecting objects? 
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Humans collect things.

There are fine lines between collectors, pack rats, and hoarders. But even the most minimalist among us delights in particular possessions. We invest a great deal of meaning in the objects of our affection.

The things we are most drawn to tell others so much about who we are. Chance finds in a ditch at the side of the road or unearthing a mysterious, ancient thing while tilling soil at our property’s edge are more intense experiences than choosing a hammer at the hardware store.

​But judging from the crowds breaking down doors at the mall on Black Friday, and the staggering success of easy access click and pay sites like Amazon, consuming is compulsive and satisfying however it happens. 

Mosvintage Event Hall. Tess Mattew, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Collecting is related to shopping, but it is an even more elevated experience. A collector has a profound attachment to the kinds of objects she pursues. For some, the peak experience depends on the chance. Mudlarkers and metal detectorists rescue refuse, digging up the recent or distant past. For others, bargain hunting is the name of the game. Finding a special piece for next to nothing inflates the excitement. Big ticket items thrill, too, bringing a certain satisfaction after a long dream of acquisition, or signalling wealth and status for those who can make big purchases without sacrifice.

Some people seek very specific treasures: coins from a particular place or era, jewels from beloved designers, or variations on a theme like Raggedy Ann dolls or blue and white pottery. Bibliophiles may hoard heaping volumes of books with very little else to their name. Others still value rarity most of all, and vigilantly hunt impossible items, original art or fragile glassware, or letters from long-dead poets, where only one or few are known to exist. Money may be no object to such collectors, who spare no expense to possess that unique thing. 

Whatever one’s motivation or hunting style, the pursuit, acquisition, contemplation, and “having” of the object bring extraordinary pleasure and purpose to our lives.
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Objects mean so much to us. They might be beautiful or strange, ubiquitous or rare, useful or useless. But they tell us stories about our existence and connect us to others who have shared them. They take us into the mist of the past and the mysteries of the mind. They are talismans, mementoes, markers, artifacts.

The Odalisque with Puppets, by Georges Brasseur (Belgium) 1930

Perhaps some are not familiar with the phenomenon of “objectophilia,” a unique fetish or paraphilia sometimes called “object sexuality.”

​Some people experience romantic and erotic attraction focused on a specific object or kind of object. Google’s AI defines this as “a form of romantic or sexual attraction focused on specific inanimate objects, such as structures, vehicles, or items. Individuals often feel deep emotional bonds, love, and a sense of reciprocation from these objects, sometimes identifying this as a core aspect of their identity rather than a mere fetish.”

You may have read the story about the woman who married the Eiffel Tower, after a previous relationship with her archery bow. A more promiscuous fellow claimed to have had relationships with more than a thousand cars. There were people in the news who fell in love with chandeliers and vacuum cleaners.

“Objectophiles often perceive that the objects have souls, personalities, or consciousness, and that they can return affection.”

Probably few of us (maybe?) feel an erotic attraction to antique milk glass dice or old puppets, but the rest of this profile likely resonates in some way. Our attachment to objects can be intense, and we often experience a kind of relationship or emotional bond. 
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I feel next to nothing about the fork and spoon in my daily dinner setting, but I have deep feelings for a tiny pair of antique sterling silver sugar tongs with chicken claw feet. The gravel in the parking lot does nothing for me, but the crystal geode heart that my late husband brought for me from the east coast sits on my work desk twenty years later, easy to seize on my way out of the apartment if there is a fire.

Lorette and Gonzalo Cardenas in 2014.

Nearly as long ago, in 2007, I worked with a brilliant friend, Gonzalo Cardenas, on an essay for the anthology Shift: Positions (edited by Gordon S. Grice, OCAD Student Press.) “I Heart: is True Love Possible Between People and Products?” asked whether acknowledging and nurturing this bond, rather than advertisers and corporations exploiting the emotional high of acquisition, could be a solution to the ecological problem of stuff pollution. We examined the intimate relationship that people have with products, considering whether understanding this long-term commitment we have with certain objects could reduce the impulse to have many easily disposed of objects.. 

“Deep bonds between humans bring great emotional satisfaction and meaning to life. I believe that trying to create such bonds between humans and their possessions can replace some of the empty, desperate materialism our culture is dying from with meaningful experiences.”
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It is obvious that decades of shaming each other as  shallow for object lust has had no effect on mitigating consumer culture. Could the key to ecological stewardship be in cultivating our natural need to collect and cultivate these objects? Could fostering rather than attempting to eradicate this deep bond between man and thing be its own solution?

Marie Kondo’s 2014 book of clutter clearly struck a chord, selling over nine million copies, an irony for a treatise on minimalism. The premise behind The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was that less is more, with an important twist: every object in our life should be one that “sparks joy.” 

Kondo encourages overwhelmed consumers to slow down, touch every thing, garment, fork, and book in our lives, and keep only those things that fill us with happiness or strong emotional connection.  Moving forward, we should prioritize purchases that matter deeply and forego quantity.

Her method points out that we need a lot less than we have been programmed to think, and most of our things actually cause us stress and anxiety. She encourages us to think about the things that bring us joy, and avoid the stuff of superficial relationships. What if every day was a special occasion? Shouldn’t we want to always wear our most valued accessories and beloved fabrics, and eat on a few beautiful dishes? Isn’t one prized belt or our favourite mug far more valuable and enriching than countless options that mean nothing to us at all?

While Kondo’s personal rule to keep only thirty books in her library was impossible for me to match, the gist of her philosophy was indeed "life changing magic.". Just by reading her book, I found myself putting things back and turning away from the checkout line. Did I really love the thing in my shopping cart? Would I rather not save my hard-earned money for the vintage Mexican silver and amethyst Mathilde Poulat ring I’d always coveted instead of another pair of cheap earrings that I might wear once? Wouldn’t I treasure one of the many old art books on my list more when I found it than the handful of paperbacks that caught my eye but  wouldn’t add anything to my soul?

Perhaps the success of Kondo’s method is the implied acknowledgement that objects have an essence. Artifact collectors and antique aficionados understand that the treasures they seek are not just metal and wood, but possess a mysterious inner force that speaks of human creativity, history, and the relationships they have with people. Intricate cultural handicrafts and precious gemstones are obvious. But even plastic has magical properties and tells stories about a culture.
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The Kondo method and other decluttering initiatives promise personal freedom and a new kind of relationship with our material goods. Reducing future acquisitions of thneeds (coined by Dr. Seuss in The Lorax, meaning useless, overhyped objects created for mass sales) and a more connected, intimate relationship with objects we keep is a positive direction for us all.

​But missing in such missions is the age-old conundrum. What should we do with all this stuff? Everything we have ever produced ends up somewhere. Hoarders try to save it. Minimalists ignore it. Junk collectors repurpose it. But all of it is out there, heaped up in our landfills, swimming in our oceans, tucked behind glass in our museums, gathering dust in our attics. 

Artist and photographer Barry Rosenthal understands the lure of objects as well as their disposability. He is a hunter and collector, a beachcomber like Suzanne in the above-quoted song. He picks up forgotten detritus from the shores of the New York harbour. It’s not the same harbour as Suzanne’s in Montreal, but a poetic parallel nonetheless. 

Rosenthal embodies the old adage that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. He gathers only what is discarded and keeps it, assembling it in various ways to create still-life arrangements that he photographs in striking compositions that tell stories about our stuff. 
Rosenthal is a lifelong collector, starting in childhood with baseball cards and coins. Today he collects a lot of things, including pot metal horses and cast-iron frying pans. Mudlarking and beachcombing found objects for his artwork is related to but different from personal collecting. His series, Found in Nature, uses only objects that are free and lost or thrown away, that have ended up on the shores of the harbour. He was working on a series of botanical photographs at the time. “I was scouting out a bird sanctuary, looking for plants to collect and shoot,” Rosenthal told Meta Nexus Magazine online. “Instead I saw vast amounts of colourful plastic trash. I picked up the trash and decided to work with this new material instead of my usual subject.”

Rosenthal picks up materials indiscriminately, regardless of his personal attraction to them or any utility they may have once had.  He cleans them up at home and stores them. Then he sets up presentations of his found objects, on a black or white background, organizing them by type, by colour, or other aesthetic variables.

One particularly striking assemblage is of all blue rubbish, mostly plastic. The arrangement includes hair combs, an array of Paper Mate pens, several children’s sand shovels, a broken propeller, a broom head, a flip flop, and numerous balls and lids. There is a toy crab, and an octopus,  a toy soldier, and a kid’s rowboat. 

Another piece features plastic jugs in various colours and sizes, the kinds of jugs that engine oil comes in, yellow, orange, blue, green, black and red. Some of the jugs are dented or crushed, some are pristine.

One piece features only caps and water bottle nipples, forming an abstract piece of colourful circles. Another shows only balls, including footballs, golf balls, tennis balls, and so on. Rosenthal even rescues plastic eating utensils, criss-crossing spoons, forks, knives and sporks into an artful composition. Most are white but two are blue and one is red.

The prettiest of these works is of old glass bottles, mostly brown and clear glass, showing apothecary designs of the past.

Barry’s Found in Nature series has been widely published and exhibited, landing in National Geographic Brazil and the Museum of Modern Art. The artist considers himself today a witness, who hopes his work inspires future sustainability by raising awareness of marine pollution. But it is the act of collecting that garbage that led him to this place, which was not the original motivation of the work.

In this way, Rosenthal’s art is both a love letter to stuff and a lamentation.

He told Meta Nexus, “I didn’t conceive of this project from a political or environmental point of view. As an artist, I was visually attracted to this stuff. I had no ax to grind. I knew that I could make something out of the detritus. It was just my curiosity at work... I am shocked and disgusted by what I find. No coastal area in the world is protected from this human created mess.”
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Today, he speaks about the perils of plastic pollution in the oceans. As we read above, there are “heroes in the seaweed.”

Busy Intersection, Knolling, photo by Norm Wright via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

​This kind of photography, of documenting categorized objects, meticulously and neatly arranged, usually from above is called “knolling.” The word was invented in 1987 by Andrew Kromelow and Tom Sachs, working in architect Frank Gehry’s workshop, and referencing the angular design of Knoll furniture. Technically, knolling means objects are arranged in a grid with 90-degree angles. But popular perception has expanded the idea to tidy arrangements in general.  It was a way to visually keep track of tools and inventory objects but became a popular aesthetic for storytelling in photography and for advertisers. 

Knolling has shown up in photos of everything from cell phones, makeup, Lego, magic markers and pasta.

The knolling approach appeals to both our fascination with and love of objects and our desire to manage them, order them, categorize them, and display them. How we organize our objects and display them, then engage with them or contemplate them, is part of the way we experience our stuff. ​

Artist Kija Lucas creates photographic art with a similar aesthetic and style. Her series Objects to Remember You By showcases personal object collections to tell stories about individuals rather than humanity as a whole, zooming in on the objects someone keeps and presenting them carefully on a black background.

Different from Rosenthal, Lucas does not collect the objects herself. Rather, she collects the people and their stories, documenting their private collections. Rather than coming from the collective anonymity of disposal, found along coasts, her images capture what people have chosen to keep and invested with personal meaning.

In Shelf 1 of the series, we see three tidy rows of belongings, including a Virgin Mary statuette, several brass bangles, a Chanel lipstick tube, a pterodactyl, a postcard from Daytona Beach, and a copy of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street.

In Shelf 4, we see a vintage Singer sewing machine, a cowrie shell, The Silver Palate cookbook, a menorah, a trophy, and a white elephant planter with leaves.

“I feel like each person has a history that should be told,” Lucas said in HAF: New Photography magazine online.  “I am a collector in a way because I photograph these things, and I care for them and the related stories… But, the objects go home with their owner.”

She names related works in several series The Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy. “I have a lot of feelings about museums and the colonial impulse to collect and own, and what ownership of certain histories and certain objects is. Museums hold onto the actual thing, assigning monetary and provenance value to it. I'm only interested in the sentimental value of a thing. And I'm only interested in photographing it.”

Cabinet of Curiosities, by Domenico Remps (Italy, b. Germany) 1690s

I share Lucas’ interest in the sentimental relationship people have with certain material products, and her concern about the role of museums. Museums have come under scrutiny in recent years for problematic practices of coercive acquisition and looting, commodification of sacred cultural artifacts, and displaying other cultures through primitive or exotic lenses. Collecting and categorization are seen from this perspective as theft and dominance.

Many museums today have modernized to align their best practices with repatriation in mind, returning stolen and sacred artifacts to their original owners, and updating their knowledge resources with more accurate descriptions of other people and cultures. But perhaps these true criticisms tell only part of the story. Curiosity and education about the world are at least partial drivers behind the idea and practice of the museum. The word “museum” comes from “muse,” a concept of inspiration. The museum is the house of the muse. However problematic past practices of archeology and research have been, museums now exist in cultures all over the world, sharing important information about people and the past.

Museum goers and antique and artifact aficionados and collectors are often driven by genuine curiosity and admiration for the history and artistry of cultures beyond their own. Collecting is a universal impulse and practice, not just a colonial one. Even nomadic cultures like the Bedouin collect objects, often incorporating coins, amulets, and beads into portable adornment. Collecting was known already as far back as 3000 BC in Mesopotamia.

Nor is object amassing a uniquely human phenomenon. Many animals collect things, too. Bowerbirds gather shiny objects to adorn their nests. They love blue objects best. Decorator crabs use shells to create disguises. Crows are known to collect coins and bright, shiny objects. Rats steal and hoard stuff, too, keys, coins, buttons, rings. Lacewing larvae, also known as “junk bugs,” have been gathering trash and debris for over a hundred million years, carrying dried vegetation and carcasses of other insects on their back since time immemorial.

Bowerbird. JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

​The origin of museums themselves came from a kind of object lust. Some expressions of this fascination were indeed problematic and racist. Others came from genuine interest. As wealth grew in the 1500s, private collectors began amassing objects for home display, growing eclectic collections of historical and global cultural artifacts, taxidermy specimens, geology, other items of natural history, coins, bottles, relics, and works of art. They were sometimes called “curiosity cabinets,” reflecting curiosity about the world, and sometimes called “wonder rooms” or “Wunderkammer.” These object displays certainly showed off the wealth of the individual collector, who often opened the door to friends and colleagues to view them. Eventually, these collections grew into private or public museums.

Corner of a Cabinet, by Frans Francken the Younger (Flanders) 1619?

Wunderkammer and muse houses were and are viewed as holy and magical. Their enchantment comes from the widespread human belief that objects themselves are enchanted, and the stories they hold about humans are profoundly important and meaningful, even mystical. This value is beyond monetary worth, but intrinsic and even otherworldly. The idea that certain objects have immense meaning is widespread among cultures and eras. Objects have deep sentimental value, connecting us to our own ancestors, to people we worship such as saints or celebrities, or to people and cultures that have vanished. 

Objects that are handmade have much deeper emotional value than objects that are mass produced. We believe that many objects have a kind of spirit or life of their own, and many objects are believed to hold symbolic or actual ritual powers. Amulets, talismans, and religious objects are often considered more valuable than those made of jewels or precious metals. It doesn’t matter if these objects are simple stone or wood, or garbage. People comb thrift shops and yard sales or riverbanks for debris that could hold such a treasure. A rusty old tin object with no monetary value is deemed priceless if an emotional, cultural, or ritual value is attached to it.

Our attachment to objects is so universal that many religious practices seek to eschew this desire in the same way they encourage us to overcome or control our natural sexual urges. The idea of “living like a monk” is not just about chastity, but about detachment from possessions. 

Interestingly, in such practices, limiting the number of objects available to the observant means an intense attachment to specific objects. They enter into a deep relationship with particular revered objects that are invested with sacred, priceless, symbolic meaning. 
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If all of us have some kind of attachment to objects, some are more attached than others. Collectors of course have specific, deep interests in objects of a particular nature. But worthless objects are an obsession for people who hoard. The type of object amassed distinguishes maximalism-prone collectors and hoarders, who compulsively gather stuff indiscriminately, often viewing refuse and precious artifacts as having equal, intense value. They might be equally attached to a Canadian Tire flyer or cheap mass manufactured holiday ornament as they are to a precious heritage artifact or diamond ring. Hoarders are also distinguished by the lack of organization and by the scale: they can fill all available space in their dwelling, to the point of peril for those living in the mess, and even if they occasionally attempt organization, mountains of assorted objects grow unruly around them, rather than being tidied and categorized aesthetically for display. 

Hoarding. Photo by Vicki Moore via Flickr. CC BY 2.0

I grew up in such a situation. My mother was a hoarder. There was no refuge from the refuse, it piled up on every surface in every room. Mom squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars on junk, often in doubles or triples or more of the same objects, most never used, and died penniless. We had five refrigerators and they were stuffed full of spoiled food. When she passed away last year, there were bags of food still in her fridge from 1987. No attempt at clearing or change was ever made: our sizeable house was filled from top to bottom with crap never recycled or donated or tossed away. This included thousands of empty margarine containers, rancid toiletries decades old, plastic flowers, a sea of unopened boxes of Christmas decorations, cardboard, toilet paper rolls, envelopes from promotional mail, baby food jars, and dozens of trays of used cat litter. 

Mother consumed obsessively, too. I recall visiting a bead shop in the early ‘90s and she delighted the owner of the small store with a $700 purchase. She made two necklaces and the rest of the beads were rescued thirty years later from cartons of dusty Styrofoam, yellowing Woman’s Day magazines, and mouldy coffee grinds.
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Very little is understood about the psychology of hoarding. In Japan, it is called gomi yashiki, which means “garbage mansion.” It is often equated with poverty trauma in the developmental years, yet people who hoard are not universally poor. Furthermore, they spend to the point of desolation on space for storage and unused objects, seldom acting with frugality in mind. We were neither wealthy nor poor: my father was a factory worker with one job through forty years, and Mom inherited a large house and small farm from my grandparents. Every red cent and acre was spent on hoarding crap: the farm is long gone. Father worked himself into the ground trying to pay off the shopping bills, and he had nothing but his truck when he passed away in 2018.  

Lorette's Little Museum.

If I have inherited these tendencies, it manifests very differently for me. I’m an impulsive shopper, marginally better with a bit of wisdom of the years. I am also prone to cleaning binges, eager to donate boxes of discards. I have no problem with parting with them. However, certain objects hold tremendous fascination and value for me. I avidly collect treasures and house them in my art studio on shelves lining every available space on the wall. I refer to this area as my “little museum.” 

Most people would unkindly refer to the objects that attract me as knickknacks or tchotchkes. It is an eclectic collection to be sure, but only certain objects make the cut. They must be small, the smaller the better, with miniature and tiny objects considered the most enchanting. I would never choose a regular sized doll, but tiny dolls and figurines abound. Original works of art or craft are also prioritized. Antiques and ancient artifacts are important, the older the better. Treasures from the world are as essential to me as personal sentimental pieces. And objects that are magical, talismanic, or spiritual, from an array of traditions, are the most important of all.

None of the objects in my museum are valuable, but the collection is valuable to me personally.. I want these objects around me at all times, which is why they are in my studio and office, where I work every day. 

A few objects in the collection: Himalayan chime earrings meant to spook away evil spirits with their rustling; a seahorse skeleton dipped in sterling silver that I have owned since I was ten; cuff links from a friend who took his life a few years ago; my Opa’s broken harmonica; a lapis lazuli game piece from Jiroft, a civilization unearthed and discovered a few decades ago in Iran; a plastic miniature Teletubby doll; several original smurfs; a camel tooth; a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce from my long-ago days on the streets of New Orleans; a Roman era hat or cloak pin; a wooden angel from Germany with my mother’s name on it, from her childhood; a Stanhope rosary from Mexico with a tiny bead where you can squint into and see the Virgin of Guadalupe; a terracotta woman figurine from the women of Sejnane in Tunisia; a meteorite; exvoto art from a Mexican flea market; tiny figurines of Santa Muerte, purchased on site of the shrine of the goddess of death in the notorious Tepito district of Mexico City; pale pink pointe ballet slippers; filigree, coral and turquoise wedding ring from Uzbekistan; a childhood lock of a late bestie’s hair; tiny sterling dice; penca de balangandan, a 19th century pin full of silver and alloy charms, worn by enslaved women for protection and luck; a Moo cow creamer; a human rib bone from a medical specimen provider; a certificate from my then-young brother awarding “best sister in the world”; a small brass box from a girlfriend who was murdered in high school; a little Cuzco style painting I bought in Lima, Peru; a creative writing medal from eighth grade; a nkisi nkondi doll from Congo; a small wooden Madonna figurine from Bogota.
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Objects of this variety are a core part of my identity and bring a great deal of magic and meaning to my life. They connect me to other people, to my own memories and ancestry, to the creativity and imagination of other people and cultures, and they fuel my art, poetry, and stories. Images are also matters of profound fascination for me, whether of interesting people, objects, religious imagery, or art. Images have always been the backbone of my visual art practice, which integrates collage and mixed media on canvas or in three-dimensional “treasure boxes” that also incorporate tiny found or gathered objects.  

Soap Bubble Set, Lunar Variant, by Joseph Cornell (USA) 1950

A like-minded soul who was equally charmed by intriguing objects and imagery was an American artist by the name of Joseph Cornell. Cornell was a prolific collector. He scoured thrift stores and antique shops on his daily walks, treasure hunting for addictions to his collection.

Cornell chose a wide variety of materials: photographs of actresses and poets and ballerinas; toys, goblets, seashells, balls; flotsam and jetsam like springs and pipes and old watches; pictures of birds; maps; book pages. 

He sorted his treasures in a heap of boxes with labels in handwritten marker on the side: Durer; corks; tinfoil; dried pigment. He kept collages and found images in more than 160 folders or “dossiers” or visual material.

Cornell was a shy and reticent man, intimidated by large groups of people. He largely kept to himself, and spent most of his time at home with his mother and with his brother, who had cerebral palsy and depended on Joseph for care. He had crushes on Emily Dickinson and ballet dancers but seldom talked to women. One exception was his friendship with Yayoi Kusama, then a little-known artist from Japan who was 26 years his junior. Kusama was struggling for recognition in a misogynist art market. Her work was radical and performative and overshadowed by men around her who stole her ideas. Both found each other easy to talk to and developed a deep bond. Kusama found Joseph gentle. She described their relationship as a “platonic romance.” 

In the long evenings strained by an uneasy relationship with Mother and preoccupied with his brother’s needs, Joseph sorted and arranged his stuff. He began juxtaposing his favourite images, gluing them into small boxes, adding twigs and trinkets and ephemera until he found them sufficiently aesthetic and poetic. Behold, assemblage, and shadowbox art, were born.

Cornell’s object and image shrines were utterly enchanting and charmed audiences. 
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The poet Charles Simic wrote in Dime Store Alchemy, a collection of poems inspired by the life and work of Joseph Cornell, “Somewhere in the city of New York there are four or five still-unknown objects that belong together. Once together they'll make a work of art. That's Cornell's premise, his metaphysics, and his religion.”

Cornell's Studio.

Simic’s collection of spare poems and impressions after Cornell has become a classic of ekphrasis. But he was just one writer inspired by the object art. 

Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote a poem called “Objects and Apparitions”:  “Monuments to every moment, refuse of every moment, used: cages for infinity./ Marbles, buttons, thimbles, dice, pins, stamps, and glass beads: tales of time.” 

Anne Tyler wrote a novel in 1974 inspired by the artist, Celestial Navigation. Jonathan Safran Foer gathered short stories and poems after Cornell for an anthology called A Convergence of Birds.
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Our collective attraction to objects has always been difficult to explain. Theories abound about status, ownership, control, security, trauma, poverty, memory, superstition, and more. It’s likely they are all relevant to the discussion. But do they go far enough? It’s totally understandable, for example, that as children grappling with alienation, we create friends in our plush toys. Equally, that expensive shiny acquisitions can provide security for us if we grew up in poverty. But what explains the unique thrall that specific objects hold for each of us, over others? We derive incredible pleasure and purpose from our objects. And those that don’t have this effect are easily disposed of. Objects tell the story of our life and our ancestry, or they connect us to other lives and stories. They seem to have their own spirit, and our relationship with them reflects deeply on our very identity.

Handmade objects are widely perceived as having greater value than factory-made objects, whose thrill is often fleeting. Artistic objects, along with religious objects, sentimental objects, rare objects, and objects that are ancient are especially important to most of us.

Psychologists, religions, writers, and artists continue to explore the role of objects, positive and negative, in our lives, and what might be at the heart of this mystery bond we have.

One thing is true: overconsumption and greed are only part of the story. The large population of our current world, and our easy access to products, has helped steer us toward excess and environmental degradation. But objects are not a current vogue. People who own very few objects may have an even more profound attachment to their things than those with an embarrassing abundance. 

Anthropologist and archeologist Ian Hodder wrote a book in 2018, Where Are We Heading? The Evolution of Humans and Things (Yale Press), with a different take. 

He talks about the intricate layers of dependency that humans have with their objects. Whether practically, socially, or spiritually useful, we are bonded to our objects because we depend on them to live, to define our identity, culture, and lifestyles. 

Such a relationship and dependency is nothing new. Hodder says it goes back more than two million years, and that there aren’t any people or eras where we did not depend on things for crucial aspects of our existence, whether hunting, farming, faith, or as a way to connect to our past or to other cultures. Extracting from nature and leaving a mess behind has also always been part of the object drama. 

In the Stanford Report, February 5, 2019, Hodder said, “Entanglement is the idea that describes a dependency in our relationship with the things we make. We, as humans, depend on things in all sorts of ways, as tools to keep warm and gather food or as a way to show our social status. In my view, being dependent on things is what makes us human. We cannot be without things.”
 
 Lorette C. Luzajic