Saying Goodbye with a Disposable Camera

Welcome back! Last week, I introduced It’s Ok to Let Go, a virtual exhibition featuring artwork from Tracey Emin, María Teresa Hincapié and others who explore loss and identity through their personal possessions. This week, the exhibition continues with my own photo essay and series on letting go.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION 

If you walk through Berlin, where I live, you’ll notice cardboard boxes, squatting outside people’s apartments, with the words zu verschenken scrawled in Sharpie. 

Zu verschenken means “to give away,” and inside these boxes you’ll find anything you can imagine: mismatched tea sets, baby shoes, vintage atlases, old CDs, creepy dolls, lamps, winter coats, puzzles, etc. You can take what you want and leave what you don’t – and even when I don’t take anything, I always look inside. Each zu verschenken box is a surprise, a treasure chest offering a glimpse into someone else’s life. 

A lot of places have donation systems – clothing bins, community fridges, little free libraries – but the zu verschenken boxes feel different. For one, they’re not aimed at any specific population, you don’t have to be struggling to take from the boxes. Also, unlike almost everything else in Germany, there’s no formal procedure or paperwork needed to create a zu verschenken box. They exist in a legal grey zone, but from what I’ve seen, anyone can start one or take from one. And there’s something about this openness and lack of structure that mirrors the experience we all go through of shedding pieces of our lives and taking on what once belonged to someone else. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous essays, I’m pretty good at letting go of material items – or maybe not good, but fast. Like ripping off a bandaid, I clean out my life with an urgency that verges on aggression. I purge my closet. I get rid of sentimental objects. I throw it all away. It’s like the faster that my stuff is gone, the quicker I can move on.

But over the last few weeks, as I’ve reflected on what it means to be in transition, I’ve thought about how learning to let go in the material world can prepare us for letting go in a more existential sense. The way we let go of a pair of jeans becomes practice for how we’ll eventually say goodbye to people, places, pets and parts of ourselves.

And so, when I look at the way I’m used to letting go, I’ve started to wonder if maybe I haven’t been doing it right. Like maybe I’ve been too detached, too careless. 

So I decided to give myself an exercise. I was going to get rid of some personal belongings, but this time I would try to do it with mindfulness and gratitude.

And to add a bit more playfulness, I wanted to give the backstory of each of these objects. I attached Geschenktags – gift tags – to the items I wanted to let go. On each tag, I wrote a sentence from the point of view of this possession about what it experienced with me. I did this because A.) it’s ridiculous and B.) it forced me to honor the place they had in my life. 

The whole idea for this project was inspired by a childhood memory. Back in elementary school, my class had this frog – not a real frog, but a stuffed one, an off-brand Beanie Baby with bulbous eyes and plush greenish-brown belly. And Mr. Frog wasn’t just a class toy; he was part of a bigger scheme. The plan, our teacher told us, was for him to embark on a global tour. We would send him into the world, and each person he met would send our class an email, detailing his adventures. Then, Mr. Frog would be passed off to another traveler so he could continue his journey. 

A globetrotting stuffed frog is the kind of childhood fantasy that you'll only understand if you were also an eight-year-old completely obsessed with stuffed animals. If, for example, you were also weird kid who spent hours teaching your animals their times tables and getting overly invested in their personalities and interpersonal dramas. I was destined to be part of Mr. Frog’s odyssey, and by some cosmic twist of fate – or maybe because my mom had booked a trip to Florida for the following week – I got to be the one to set him loose on the world. 

The two of us shared a seat on the plane ride to Pensacola, where he got his first taste of a tropical climate and brain-melting heat. We spent lazy days at grandma’s, eating boiled peanuts on the porch, beading necklaces, and taking disposable camera pictures on white-sand beaches. When the week was up, it was time for Mr. Frog to be on his way, and I had to pass him onto the next traveler. I can’t remember exactly who I gave him to – a neighbor, maybe, or family friend, but I do remember there being a moment of doubt just before I handed him over. Would he really make it around the world? Would he be given the care that every eight-year-old knows a stuffed frog deserves? I suddenly questioned the whole project and why I’d ever gotten involved. 

Something similar happened with the objects I decided to give away this summer. Once I wrote the gift tags, remembering the stories behind each item, I felt this resistance to setting them free. I wasn’t as sentimental as I’d been about Mr. Frog, but releasing these objects made me feel oddly exposed. It was like I was preparing to throw scraps of my journal all around the city. For several weeks, the box of items sat in a corner of my house, in a spot where I tripped over them every time I walked in or out of the front door. I considered calling off the whole project, but then, just as I had gotten the courage to set Mr. Frog loose, I got the nerve to deal with my pile of stuff. 

I bought a disposable camera – with 27 shots – and set out to photograph the 27 objects and leave them in zu verschenken spots around the city. It was one of the last, sluggish summer days and time slowed as I wandered from Kreuzberg to Schöneberg to Mitte to Moabit, capturing my goodbyes. Each object carries a fragment of my story, and I hope whoever takes them finds something meaningful in that.

Before I show you the pictures, I have to say that they didn’t turn out as I expected. Disposable cameras are like that – a mix of surprise and unpredictability. There were disappointments with some pictures coming out blurry and faded. Others were totally out of frame or too dark. A few pictures I took didn’t even make it into the final batch.

At first I was annoyed - but these disappointments were also a reminder that when we let go of something, it continues to change, beyond our control. It’s easy to cling to our memories, as if they are complete and fixed, but the reality is that everything is always in flux, something I’m reminded of every time I let something go.  

By the time I returned from Florida and was back in my elementary school classroom, Mr. Frog was already on his world tour. Over the next weeks, he was passed from traveler to traveler. At one point, he made it all the way to Australia. In a picture from that part of his trip, Mr. Frog looked less green and more bluish, as if his travels over seas and through time had changed him. I could see he wasn’t the same frog who sat on my grandma’s porch. 

At that point in my life, I’d only been out of the country once, and my concern over whether Mr. Frog would be cared for was replaced with a strange mix of awe and envy. This stuffed animal seemed more worldly than me. I remember there being a sinking realization that I’d probably never see him again, but that picture of Mr. Frog against a dramatic mountainscape also awakened something in me – that I wanted to get out of the flat, stale suburbs and experience this kind of freedom, too. 

Maybe, in letting go of something, we’re not just accepting that this thing – whether it’s a frog, a person or a job – will continue to evolve, but also that by releasing it, we give ourselves the chance to grow and change, too. In this sense, letting go is less of an ending and more of a guide to our next destination. 

My old possessions are already out in the world, having their own adventures. These photos capture the moment just before we parted ways – when they tipped out of my hands into the rest of their lives and I carried on into the rest of mine. 

Disposable (2024) 

Photos by me and @imaginancer

Alright, let’s begin…

Subway Map
“I’m a subway map bought by someone who missed New York City. Let me inspire your travels.”

Palette
“Lonely palette in search of an artist’s thumb”

Cookbook 
“In search of someone who can cook.” 

Bag for a Partytier 
“Ich will noch ‘n bisschen tanzen” (“I want to dance some more”) 

Canvas 
“I could be your masterpiece” 

Candelabra 
“Born in the 70s. Made in Italy. Great at parties.” 

Leash. As dog owners know, it takes time to find the right leash. This was too long.
“I like looooong walks” 

Leash. This one was too short.
”zu verschenken”

Swedish cookie tin
“I am empty. But full of possibility.” 

Lamp 
“I’m not perfekt but I’ll light up your life.” 

Already getting tired of carrying all this stuff 

Guidebook 
“I can crash a wedding, ride a motorcycle and find the best khanom. Let me be your guide.” 

Radio. This one didn’t travel far. @imaginancer took this picture, then took it home 

I’m so bad at resting that I bought a book about it. A great book, though. 

Gradually lightening the load…

Collar. (The dog is NOT zu verschenken) 
“Looking for a good boy or girl” 

“Take me back to Paris”
Letting go of books and creative differences 🙄

WTF? I don’t even remember taking this one.

Wig on statue
“Good at scaring dogs and children” 

Headlamp
“I once searched for bats in the Yucatán - ready for my next adventure” 
(The person who runs this shop I’m sitting outside of hates when people sit on the bench, so when I had the chance to sit there without ridicule, I took it 😋)

As the day ended, I felt satisfaction and giddiness – not just from the thrill of sitting on the forbidden bench but from a deeper sense of completion. For the first time, maybe ever, I’d guided myself through a deliberate process of letting go. It was time consuming and pretty tiring, but this exercise has helped me understand something crucial. Letting go of something isn’t just about discarding stuff but also creating a ritual around releasing things from your life. Rituals give us a way to honor the past and unburden ourselves, and they also affirm that we can make something from our losses. That through our own creative processes, we’re capable of becoming something new.

Yes! The exhibition is not over. Because letting go is not just about releasing the old but also about making room for the new – for surprises. So, stay tuned 🙃