“The beautiful woman, cooking with power tools, is a vaporous role model. Her occult powers—the ability to stop time, to do everything, and to look good while doing it—are terrifying and alluring. She does not wear safety goggles. She does not need to.” from “Instructions for Everyday Life: Pornographies of Comfort and Instruments of Hope in Homecraft Magazines, 1945-2006,” a paper I wrote in 2008. One in a series of curious research projects I undertook during college.

“The beautiful woman, cooking with power tools, is a vaporous role model. Her occult powers—the ability to stop time, to do everything, and to look good while doing it—are terrifying and alluring. She does not wear safety goggles. She does not need to.”

from “Instructions for Everyday Life: Pornographies of Comfort and Instruments of Hope in Homecraft Magazines, 1945-2006,” a paper I wrote in 2008. One in a series of curious research projects I undertook during college.

The important role of artists and writers as hoarders and exploiters of snapshot imagery is not surprising, as artists are often instrumental in the process of discovering meaning in lost, abandoned, and other overlooked artifacts in search of the raw material of art.

Weston Naef, curator, in the Getty Museum exhibition catalog for Close to Home: An American Album, in 2004. (A related interview: Weston Naef Discusses the Getty Snapshot Exhibition.)

As quoted in a paper I wrote in 2007 (part of a series of curious research projects I undertook during college).