Trading in Memories

Image from the book Trading in Memories

Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places

Enter a world of found art, scavenged treasures and mysterious tales of adventures in flea markets, antique shops, cemeteries and book shops.
Enter Barbara's world ...

Trading in Memories, the latest book by Vancouver designer and writer Barbara Hodgson, is a collage of souvenirs from around the world.

“I believe that all writers are magicians. Perhaps one of the most enchanting magicians I know of is Barbara Hodgson ..." Read more

"You can’t help but be astonished by the bizarre factoids and tidbits of history Hodgson unearths ..." See all reviews

"It would be impossible for me to settle on one object as the most important ..." Barbara on travel and found art ...

Paris Newspaper

Barbara Hodgson on Paris

I drop many things. I have left a trail of dollars, pesetas, lire, francs, dinars, and dirhams that crisscrosses North America, Europe, and the Middle East. I have abandoned boarding cards before boarding flights, slept securely on my passport in the beds of dubious hotels only to go out and leave it under the pillow the next morning, left my camera dangling on chair backs in cafés. Perhaps I am drawn to jetsam because I am picking up my own tracks, following myself through city streets, retrieving myself.

Box from Vancouver

Barbara Hodgson on Vancouver

Much of what I look for is dictated by the projects I am working on. At particular times, I’ve been searching for ephemera from Morocco, for anatomical engravings from Austria and Hungary, for maps of the South Atlantic, for house plans from Damascus, for pulp novels about opium addiction or Western women escaping to harems. It would be ideal always to be prepared, always to know in advance what will be needed, but there are occasions when I cannot resist the object itself, if only for its history.

Recent books by Barbara Hodgson

Dreaming of East

Dreaming of East

No Place for a Lady

No Place for a Lady

Italy Out of Hand

Italy Out of Hand