Donated By

Donated By is a slideshow of images, taken by artists M. Michelle Illuminato and Brett Hunter at the Pioneer Oil Museum in Bolivar, New York. It is the result of their attempt to visually ‘exhaust the museum’ with a hat tip to writer Georges Perec and his An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. Like Perec, they spent time observing and documenting a place, in this case, a local historical museum. They looked at what was contained, how it was organized, and in turn what those things said about the people in the surrounding village, both past and present. Using their camera lens, they looked beyond the major narratives, and captured images that express fleeting moments and unfocused details. These moments flickering one after the other, allow new stories that are ‘hidden in plain sight’ to emerge. To learn more about the artists and slideshow events, go to http://ruralscape.tumblr.com/.