Photographer and Writer Rosamond Purcell Photographer Rosamond Purcell's new book, Owls Head, is about her 20-year friendship with William Buckminster, an eccentric collector whose dilapidated antiques shop and 11-acre junkyard in Maine became something of a tourist attraction. Buckminster sold many of his items to Purcell, who took them home and photographed them in large-format Polaroids. Rosamond, who's been called the "doyenne of decay," also collaborated three times on books with the late paleontologist and science historian Stephen Jay Gould.

Photographer and Writer Rosamond Purcell

In her New Book, 'Owls Head,' She Finds Art in the Overlooked

Photographer and Writer Rosamond Purcell

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1628953/1628954" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Purcell's new book is Owls Head, about her 20-year friendship with William Buckminster. hide caption

toggle caption

Photographer Rosamond Purcell's new book, Owls Head, is about her 20-year friendship with William Buckminster, an eccentric collector whose dilapidated antiques shop and 11-acre junkyard in Maine became something of a tourist attraction. Buckminster sold many of his items to Purcell, who took them home and photographed them in large-format Polaroids. Purcell, who's been called the "doyenne of decay," has also collaborated three times on books with the late paleontologist and science historian Stephen Jay Gould.