Claire Huss and Annie Collinge’s new book is a pocketable ode to great eBay finds

The last time photographer Annie Collinge and graphic designer Claire Huss collaborated, we were left with a wonderful package of photographs of New Yorkers dressed up like old china dolls. This publication – Five Inches of Limbo – documented a photo project that Annie conducted by sifting through thrift stores to find unusual dolls and discarded toys, asking people she met on the subway to dress up like them and then shooting their portrait in the quirky get-ups. A slightly creepy but hilarious series, the images were consolidated and carefully designed for print by Claire.

Lucky for us, the pair have been great friends ever since and have once again come together with another brilliant idea for an artist book, not too far from the bizarre beaten track of Five Inches of Limbo. As collecting unusual and strange objects from thrift stores is a ritual that regularly feeds Annie’s photographic practice, she often finds herself on eBay, searching for her next find. “During lockdown she started posting stories on Instagram of her best eBay finds,” says Claire. “I thought they were brilliant. In fact, every day during that strange time, I was looking forward to seeing her stories as they were making me laugh a lot.”

It became obvious to Claire that this image archive would have to see the printed page at some point. Keen to collaborate on another artist book, she suggested the idea to Annie and the photographer was on board straight away, quickly sending Claire the 442 screenshots taken between March and June in 2020. Annie handed over full creative rein to Claire to begin exploring visual concepts that would tie the collection together for their latest collaboration, Things I looked at on eBay today.

The project was a bit of a slow burner, and took quite a few years to come together, with other projects coming along and life getting in the way, but, this did give Claire a little more time to sit with the images than usual. “There were so many good objects amongst the hundreds Annie found on eBay,” she says. “My selection was driven by the peculiarity of the object but also by the image itself – the way the object had been shot, what background had been used, the colours, patterns and shapes within the image.” So, working rather intuitively – whilst also ensuring that the selection of objects on display were representative of just how wide ranging the things that had caught Annie’s eye were – Claire edited a collection of images together for the photobook’s pages.

Since Annie found the book’s content by browsing on her phone, the publication’s format is a nod to her method of image retrieval, with prints cut to “phone size, like her screenshots”, says Claire. This also proved to be quite a practical size for a self-published project with a small print run. “I also went for other cost-effective solutions to print”, shares Claire, “like digital print on glossy paper and off-the-shelf office paper for coloured pages.” The book’s finishing touches – a playful yellow spiral binding, and colourful pages of crops that interject the book’s flow – also emulate this idea of scrolling up to reveal more images as you progress through its pages.

The aim of the book was really just to make people laugh – for readers to get as much joy out of Annie’s selections as Claire did all those years ago, a time when creative inspiration was hard to come by. “There is a lot of humour in Annie’s work which I find inspiring and refreshing and I think when we collaborate I’m good at finding the right ‘tone’ to translate it,” she says.

Having been given creative freedom from the photographer, Claire was able to use Annie’s material for the starting point of a publishing project that felt very personal in the end: “It’s rare to work with people who fully trust you to the point of wanting you to take ownership in the project”, she ends, “But it’s precisely that creative freedom that makes you achieve the best results. It also makes the process the most enjoyable, which is always really the aim with self-initiated projects.”

Things I looked at on eBay today will be launched on Saturday 1 March at Florence Loewy bookstore, in Paris.