What I’ve learned over the past couple of weeks is that I am a good, if painfully slow, retoucher. And scanner. And editor.
The only thing I seem to naturally do with any real speed is write.
Words have a way of falling out of my fingers. And mouth.
Everything else? Well, everything else will take some time.
Scanning old photographs. Cleaning up scratches. Removing decades of dust and fingerprints. Adjusting faded colors until someone’s face looks alive again instead of trapped beneath a yellow haze of time and nicotine. Even organizing digital files becomes a strange kind of archaeology after a while.
I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks buried in stacks of vintage photos from my friend DJ’s private collection. Some of the images are beautiful and classic. Some are delightfully degenerate and explicit. And some carry the kind of emotional weight that sneaks up on me when I least expect it.
In my mind’s eye, the photos are physical proof that their subjects were once alive and well. That they made art and posed and documented themselves. They are works of beauty and booty.
To outsiders, collections can look like clutter. Junk. Hoarding. Boxes of old ephemera and photographs taking up space in the closet or garage.
But collectors understand something other people sometimes miss:
Objects carry memory. And not just personal memory either. Cultural memory. Community memory. Survival memory.
I think that’s especially true for queer collectors. So much of our history was never considered important enough to preserve, yet was often considered dangerous enough to destroy.
Entire lives existed in whispers, coded language, underground publications, bars, back rooms, independent theaters, and cheaply-printed newsletters never intended to survive this long.
And yet somehow…they did.
Mostly because somebody decided to keep them.
Somebody saved the flyer.
Somebody held onto the snapshots.
Somebody stored the magazines in a closet for forty years instead of throwing them away during a panic, a purge, or a move.
Now here we are, decades later, scanning and restoring fragments of lives that mainstream culture once dismissed as disposable.
There’s something deeply moving about that.
The older I get, the more I realize I’m a collector first and foremost.
My collections are not always particularly organized or even sensible. If they were, that would imply a level of discipline and reason I simply do not possess.
But nearly everything I display around my home carries some combination of nostalgia, place, emotion, or story. Tiny artifacts connected to people and moments I don’t want to forget.
For me, collecting has become less about ownership and more about stewardship.
Temporary guardianship.
I hold onto things for a while. I protect them. I appreciate them. Then eventually they continue their journey with someone else. Or maybe they outlive me entirely.
Either way, the object survives.
And lately, during all this digital housekeeping and scanning and retouching, I’ve started thinking about how many pieces of history only exist because ordinary people decided certain things mattered enough to save.
Not museums. Not institutions. Individuals.
The weirdos. The sentimentalists. The obsessives. The artists. The queer folks with overstuffed closets, filing cabinets, and shoeboxes full of photographs.
Accidental archivists. I’m proud to be one of them.
Thank you for being a friend!
Clint 🌈✌️
COLLIDE PRESS is a reader-supported publication.
Please consider becoming a Paid Subscriber or Patron.
MAY OFFER = 25% OFF ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS
thru 05-31-26
FROM THE ARCHIVES
BORN THIS WAY ON THIS DAY
05-18 = Charles Trenet (1913-2001) = French singer and songwriter 🌈
05-18 = Don Bachardy (1934- ) = American portrait artist 🌈
05-18 = Felicia Pearson (1980- ) = American actor, author and rapper 🌈
05-18 = John Koch (1909-1978) = American artist 🌈
05-18 = Miriam Margolyes (1941- ) = English-Australian actor and voice artist 🌈
05-18 = Patrick Dennis (1921-1976) = American author 🌈
05-18 = Pierre Balmain (1914-1982) = French fashion designer 🌈
MAN CRUSHES OF THE DAY
EXPLORING THE LOVE LETTERS OF
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD AND DON BACHARDY
(The Met)
Queer history survived because enough ordinary weirdos looked at a box of “junk” and thought, actually, this matters. 😃
Clint, Great observarions on collecting! As I have said before, posing magazines were part of my growing up and coming out some 66 years ago. I wish I still had those magazines but your archive posts are wonderful reminders. Are you familiar with https://www.gerberhart.org in Chicago? Fondly, Michael