They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but for Linda Rodin, it’s all worth its weight in gold.
For the founder of Rodin, veteran stylist and social media star’s latest project, she chose to chronicle her life in an anachronistic, self-published, five-volume collection of books called “Almost an Autobiography,” which launches for preorder on its website Wednesday, priced at $350. The project is composed of 1,500 pages of still-life photos of objects she’s collected throughout her life.
Rodin’s objects are wide-reaching and often sourced from her travels, yet she didn’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting for source material: the photo book is composed of still-life shots of objects that she said are all still in her Manhattan apartment.
“I thought that I wanted to chronicle my life somehow; I’m not a writer, so I decided to do a picture book,” Rodin said. “I had always collected things, since I was a kid. I have every letter, every thing that I grew up with through my love. My mother and sister had done the same, and they passed away, so I had this treasure trove that was all pertinent to me.”
The 1,500-page collection is “just the tip of the iceberg,” Rodin said. “I sat down with a friend, and we would pair things together. What picture would look right next to that one? How about pairing my mother, when she was young, [photographed] on top of her old dress? It ultimately made total sense to me, but when others see it, they might think it’s abstract.”
“I’ve been living with all of these things for so long, and when I was a kid, my mother had all these photo albums,” Rodin continued. “It brought up a beautiful amount of nostalgia that I feel so lucky to have. It’s not just in my head; I have all of these things. It was like watching a film of your life.”
Each volume has a separate dedication to various family members (including those of the canine variety), and Rodin sought to capture the culmination of her own visual references through the tomes. “I had these mood boards, and we kept moving things around,” Rodin said. “Nothing was ever glued down, so it was like, ‘this sweater would pair well with that radish, they’re all the same color.’ It was all a visual journey of things in my life, that didn’t make sense, but that only had to make visual sense to me.”
