I’ve been in love with vintage images for over 30 years now and still go on the hunt at least once a week. The field is always exciting both visually and historically. I’m always amazed how often I learn so many new bits of arcane photographic knowledge and see things I haven’t ever seen before.
Erin has a degree in Russian Studies from Hamilton College and spent her junior year studying in Yaroslavl, Russia. Her honors thesis, Cataloguing Empire: Photographic Typologies in Late Imperial Russia (1839-1917), explored the work of William Carrick and Sergei Prokudin-Gorski in conjunction with the history of photography and ideas of empire in Russia. In 2002, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Russia and went back to Yaroslavl, where she conducted an oral history and photography project with Russian babushki. Erin has a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from New York University. Her masters thesis, Art and the Other: Collecting the Vernacular and the New Photo History, is both an historical overview of vernacular photography’s place in art museums as well as an investigation into the views of collectors, curators, and dealers. In 2011, she gave a talk at the PhotoHistory Symposium in Rochester about how Victorians used photographs in their homes. In 2012 at the Daguerreian Society Symposium, she spoke on copy daguerreotype images, drawing from her own collection as well as her brother’s. In 2015, she gave an expanded version of her interior talk at an international photo history conference in Lincoln, England. She is still tinkering with her interior research and is always on the lookout for images that show great photographic displays.
In 2018, Erin attended the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar in Colorado Springs to expand her book knowledge. In the fall of 2021, she joined the ABAA.
Thanks to Dennis, Erin has collected photographs since she was eight years old. Some categories include: hidden mothers, pre-Revolution Russian photographs, home interiors, folder photographs, tinted images, painted backdrops, photo jewelry, and whatever else catches her eye.
She prides herself in finding amazing photos to offer for sale.