O’Keefe chronicles the people who’ve devoted their lives to accumulating seemingly unlikely objects: “They’re the happiest individuals I’ve met.”
When Callum O’Keefe’s father handed away in February 2017, he left behind a detailed plan for his funeral. To some this may appear unusual, however to not O’Keefe – his father had all the time been a regimented man. He was an accountant by commerce, however his true ardour was his sprawling assortment of Coca-Cola memorabilia. For greater than 30 years he had saved his assortment in good order, housed lovingly contained in the household’s backyard shed.
“I believed it was regular,” O’Keefe says of his childhood, a time when his father would often convey buddies and strangers dwelling to admire his archive. The photographer was by no means embarrassed by these considerably uncommon habits – though his household have been, at occasions, relatively much less forgiving. “My aunt would come over and say, ‘Why’re you shopping for all this shit? Why’re you losing your cash?’,” he remembers. “That’s when Dad coined the phrase: ‘Don’t fear, they’re antiques of the long run’.”
