PHOTO ESSAY
A reckoning with my attraction to kitsch
It was only after photographing some of my oddball pieces that I came to see them less as innocently nostalgic ephemera and more as relics from a darker time.
The kitsch came at me sideways. I didn’t specifically seek these items that surround me in my home. Some were gifts. Others, knickknacks that called to me in my travels
That said, there’s always been room for the ephemera of nostalgia in my life. I have what many might consider an eclectic decorating style — something I have in common with my partner Rodney. Buying a home together, merging our stuff, called attention to our shared penchant for oddball relics, like the porcelain doll heads that I happily took home from a Christmas gift swap.
Porcelain doll heads — uncontroversial if haunting — are the kind of kitsch I can live with.
Kitsch can imply innocent nostalgia. This is the case with a tattered doll named April. It had belonged to Rodney’s sister and now, somehow, lives with us. Rodney, his siblings, and a cousin still swipe April to hide in each other’s homes, to freak each other out. My partner’s fondness for this well-past-her-prime doll makes me love it, too.
April, receding hairline and all, is a doll that once belonged to my partner Rodney's sister and that now lives with us.
But not all of the kitsch sits well with me, a revelation sparked after I bought a secondhand medium-format film camera that I taught myself to use. Seeing some of our other objects in two dimensions gave me the gaze of an outsider and made me think twice about owning them.
The literal sharpness of the medium-format photos — a result of the camera’s film, which is larger than that used in 35 mm cameras — revealed details I hadn’t noticed before. In some, I saw glimpses of a darker history. I asked myself about the objects’ more complicated meanings.
For example, what should I think about a 1950s-era lamp made from a headless figurine of an Asian person that sits on our dining room console? (Headless because I accidentally decapitated it when I dropped it — I swear it was an accident, Rodney!) I love its quirky style. I cringe at the stereotypical representation.
Should I lose my head over this 1950s-era lamp made from a figurine of an Asian person?
By contrast, as a Cuban-American, I do not feel the same pause about the small papier-mâché Black Cuban woman wearing a colorful costume. I grew up around similar depictions, and this object reminds me of a place and of people I love.
Why am I less troubled by this papier-mâché figurine of Black Cuban woman, possibly La Virgen de Regla, the patron saint of Havana? Probably because I grew up surrounded by such representations of my Cuban heritage, and she reminds me of people and a place that I love.
The doll might represent La Virgen de Regla, the patron saint of Havana, venerated for her association with fertility, protection, and love. Yet it might also just be a stereotype of an Afro-Cuban woman, not unlike southern mammy figures and Black lawn jockeys that rightly draw the ire of many.
The Asian lamp has been restored — Rodney glued the figurine’s head back on. What’s not as securely fastened are my feelings about some of these objects having a place in our home.
Published in The Boston Globe.