These objects were all among the burned debris of the cabin I grew up in. They are sentimental in that they are connected directly to my childhood home and to my family. They are most significant as reminders of what is gone. The charred spirals of burned notebooks hint at the writing that has been lost. Melted window glass, nails and other metal debris are among the few remnants of the log structure. There are a few reminders of the life we lived there: a toy car, a mug. Meanwhile, there are the things I collected from the site that indicate that this building, like my memories of it, will ultimately return to the earth—a piece of birch branch, moss, rocks. 

I grew up in an off-grid log cabin in central Maine. My father built the cabin in 1979, and I lived there with my parents, sister and brother. We used an outhouse, hand pumped water, heated with wood and didn't have electricity or a phone. After my parents divorced and my siblings and I had all gone to college and moved out, my father continued to live there until he sold the cabin in 2019. The cabin was filled with years of his notebooks and artworks, objects he had collected. After he sold it, he took what he wanted, but left quite a bit behind, including a piano and a lot of his notebooks. The new owners burned the cabin down shortly after buying it, including everything inside.

I had been photographing the cabin for over 20 years, and it figures centrally in my work. I have returned since the fire several times to take photos, collect debris and to make cyanotype photograms of some of the remains of my childhood home.

The charred metal spirals are all from notebooks that were filled with my father's hand written notes and starts of novels and poetry. In some ways it is hard to fathom all that was lost in the fire but on the other hand I feel grateful that I was able to save a fair amount and I have thousands of pages of notes and letters to read and ponder. Maybe if I read them all I will be able to understand him and myself better.

The moss and other lichen that grows at the burn site are also comforting, the cabin was so surrounded by the natural world and so many things like raccoons and mice had lived within its walls that it seems fitting that living plants be part of the rubble.

The objects that survived the fire - especially the spark plugs, the large nails, typewriter, wire box, the old spice bottle and other pieces of stoneware seem to embody the essence of 20th century household goods. My dad acquired the majority of items for the house second hand and also used them for decades before re-purposing them. It appears like the objects are kind of having a third afterlife here - lit up against the blackness of the background - almost dancing and coming alive as if they are cave paintings communicating to us a broken but decipherable narrative about the past.

 -Keliy Anderson-Staley, 2021

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