Image Source: I09.
Where these items get really interesting is when their virtual availability allows us to associate them with other objects, times or places that we normally wouldn't or couldn't. We can take the Mayan cup out of its context, especially when it's being auctioned off next to cowboy paraphenalia from a different era. You also see collectors building collections around the fact that they can find the elements of the collection online. Availability inspires certain kinds of collections.
For a great example of temporal and cultural mash-up and spontaneous free association, have a look at the recent I09 article on this topic. A collector, who collects images of dead people from the 1800s, found the above photo. The subject looks just like Nick Cage, somehow the seller of the photo also brought vampires into the mix, and labeled it the ultimate eBay auction:
Are you an unhinged billionaire? Are you a sucker for impulse buys? Do you sit around wondering if the fellow née Nicolas Kim Coppola is an immortal Confederate soldier who feasts on human blood? Then have I got an eBay purchase for you, pilgrim! Behold this recent auction titled "Nicolas Cage is a Vampire / Photo from 1870 / Tennessee":
Original c.1870 carte de visite showing a man who looks exactly like Nick Cage. Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead / vampire, et cetera, who quickens / reinvents himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host.
This is not a trick photo of any kind and has not been manipulated in Photoshop or any other graphics program. It's an original photo of a man who lived in Bristol, TN sometime around the Civil War.
Of course, it's probably an ancestor or something. And if we were to take the notion of vampires--that is to say, actual blood suckers, not Twilight sparklers--seriously, he proably wouldn't have shown up in a photograph anyhow. Of course, I don't mean to imply we actually *would* take such a concept seriously. -J.
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