As a child I was always playing imaginary games. One of them was ‘The Suitcase Game’. Every night just before I fell asleep I would visualise a suitcase and carefully unpack it. I was brought up on a diet of Saturday afternoon black and white movies so the suitcases my imagination would conjure up would usually be a 1940s model belonging to a Bette Davies type figure. She would be on the run and the case would contain a vast array of outfits, lipstick and a bottle of gin!
Sometimes my suitcase would be a carpet bag belonging to a Margaret Rutherford type of eccentric old lady and it would be filled with an endless list of objects; knitting, sweets, notebook, a pair of slippers etc.
I still play this game as I lie in bed waiting for sleep to silence my thoughts.At the moment I am haunted by a designer bag filled with silk pyjamas, a cashmere jumper, Chanel pumps and an expensive watch. I think the character it belongs to is a Libyan woman.
My latest work in progress involves a scene where a character opens a suitcase that belonged to a girl in 1976. My character, Esme, has to try to make sense of the contents in order to understand the owner.
Last week the artist Venice Shone told me about the work of the American photographer Jon Crispin.
In 1995, the New York State Museum was moving items out of the Willard Psychiatric Center in Willard NY when an attic full of suitcases was discovered. These cases had been put in storage when their owners were admitted between 1910 and the 1960’s. These suitcases remained wrapped and unclaimed as their owners remained for all their lives at the hospital. Jon Crispin has been photographing the cases and their contents.
Here is a link to a
film about Jon's work. Beautiful, haunting and inspiring
