_valerian

White Photo Boxes

These are similar to, but are not as nice looking, nor as durable as Black Photo Boxes. You get to assemble them on your own, and this is partly why they are about a third of the price of a similar sized Black Box.

Pre-Assembly:

Two minutes and a nasty paper cut later:

Using the same combination of physics (gravity) and materials (6 slabs of cardboard) as Black Photo Boxes, White Photo Boxes can also do the following:

1. Hold your photographs.

2. Open (you can put in or take out your pictures after doing this step).

3. Close (you can’t take out your pictures when it is closed).

4. Look nicer than the boxes photo paper comes in. (But not as snazzy as the Black ones)

However, White Photo Boxes also:

5. have a hinged pull-down part for easy print removal:

The Yodobashi-honten Camera building in Shinjuku has these for sale in 8×10, 10×12, 11×14, and 16×20 sizes. I’d wager that they could hold about 100 prints each. The smallest are about 1000 yen and I think the 16×20 is about 2000. The 10×12 box above was 1300 yen.
The acid-free peace of mind of Well Stored Pictures is worth the cost.

Pre-assembled these are very large sheets of cardboard, so upon purchase you’ll get a huge flat bag to take them awkwardly home on the train in.

昨日となりのアパートのごみすてで段ボール箱の上に小さいなアルバムあった。箱の中にあった物はなんか少し前の女子高校生のだったそうだった。写真を捨てるなんて勿体無いと思ったけど三日間毎朝あのアルバムはそのまま同じ格好あってやっとゴミトラックが来るの日拾ってしまった。

そのアルバムの中二枚スゴイ写真を見せたいです：

These two beautiful photos are from an album I found in my neighbor’s trash.

A more specifically worded statement would be this–> The two beautiful photos above are from a small album that was sticking out of a box of belongings* that sat in the trash area of an apartment down my street for 3 days.

Despite wanting the album from day one, I let it sit there for a few days just in case whoever left a beat-up cardboard box on the curb decided that they wanted that stuff back. Today the trash came so it seems that they were saved just in time. I don’t really know what to do with them but it is a waste to toss photographs and so they were re-appropriated into my apartment. They prove something- what was there when someone decided that it was an occasion to make a photograph. But also something else that deals with the value of how found snapshots are devoid of external context and their purity due to that same fact.

*contents: it was the paper-based jetsam of a young woman’s teen years- think uncut print club sheets and notes and returned test papers and flimsy paper photo albums with school trip photos taken with a disposable camera. These were ruined by the rain.