Boxes of Plenty

Drawings of boxes of items on display at a flea market in Kyoto, Japan.

Selected from Thirty Days Project, June 2013.

We love to see lots of things, grouped together, creating a story of plenty.

The monthly flea market at Toji temple in Kyoto is a collection of collections:
boxes stacked on boxes, on tables, on the ground, and each with a specific
selection of items.

What gets put in the box? What gets left out?
Sometimes the category is obvious (a purpose, shape or colour),
sometimes it is obscure (an era, a kind of damage, a ritual).

Without knowing any of the decisions and narrative that brought them together, we are left with only one fact:
at this moment, these things are in these boxes.