What Lies Within: The Eclectic Collections of Andrea M. Noel

by Dale Niles

In life, every now and then something happens that one does not expect.  This is what happened to me over seven years ago when I entered the collector’s world of Andrea M. Noel. A friend had approached me and said that I might be interested in photographing Andrea’s collections.  After approaching her about the project, I was presented with a list of over sixty items.  Shortly after, I approached a beautiful home with a wraparound porch festooned with wisteria. I still had no idea of what lied within.

The items where a sundry of things that Andrea has spent years gathering from various locations including Paris, New York, Atlanta, and her small hometown in southern Georgia. This book is the result of our collaborative effort to illuminate the intrinsic beauty and value of these objects which have been artfully arranged, many with great whimsy and humor. She says that these items are a way for her to connect to people. All of the items have been used and discarded, they have had a previous life, a history, and a story to tell. When I first began this project, I thought the items were different than what most collectors would seek to curate and that piqued my interest. The relationship between a collector and his or her treasures is a rich and fascinating place to dwell. What began as a project documenting a series of collections, transformed into a photographic journey that reveals discarded objects beautifully arranged in artful designs. Andrea acts as playwright and director for these interactive scenes between collections. I see some of the objects and think “I remember my mother or my grandmother using that or having one of those.”  These are more than a bunch of ordinary things. Her collections are an archive of what came before.

As Andrea says, “Collectors are born, not made.” The urge to collect is a strong instinct. Collections allow us to relive and preserve our childhood, revisit a memory, and keep the past living in our present. They also help ease our insecurities and anxieties from loss. This book is a photographic collection of things of little concern to most people, but the way they are meticulously stored and put out for display gives them a new life, a new meaning, in a form of visual storytelling. And the story can change as the items and players are chosen and arranged differently to tell a new and playful story. They are an archive of what came before being reborn into an entertaining, ever-changing story.

I have learned a lot, made a friend, and discovered that even discarded, forgotten things can have value.