"I guess my reason for collecting old Halloween photos stems from a nostalgia for my childhood," said Martin, who grew up in San Diego but now lives in Southeast Asia. "Unlike most Americans ... I don't get an annual Halloween fix, so collecting photos is a way to resurrect old memories."
"I am really fascinated by how these photographs of people dressed in primitive, homemade costumes and memorialized in faded, black-and-white photos often seem to have a real sinister aspect to them," Martin said. "I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but to me Halloween a century ago looks much scarier than it does now in digitalized color."
"I've been collecting vintage Halloween images since 2004, and what I am using now for my Halloween countdown [on Flickr] are photos that I've collected since then," Martin said. "I've got about 200 of them but I am only uploading the ones that date to the first half of the 20th century."
"Halloween was always my favorite holiday as a kid," Martin said. "Growing up in San Diego was probably not the most traditional place to celebrate Halloween. I remember in elementary school we used to be given construction paper in yellow, orange, red and brown and instructed to cut out leaf shapes to tape up on the classroom windows -- this because the trees in San Diego don't change color in autumn. Still, I have wonderful memories of Halloween there."
]," Martin said.
"As it happens, I've been collecting vintage photos and images for years now, so I started uploading those, too. Before I knew it, I was scanning old snapshots of my travels throughout Asia as well as bits of ephemera that I have been collecting for years. So my Flickr account is a real mixed bag."
"One word: eBay," Martin said. "Although the site has really gone to hell in the last year or so (sorry, eBay) there are still lots of sellers that specialize in 'found photographs.'"
Found photographs usually sell for just a few dollars on eBay, Martin said, "although the really oddball photos can go for hundreds. Some of the sellers are generous and upload large scans of their photos, so it's also possible to just download them and collect that way."
Martin has lived in Southeast Asia for more than two decades. He works as a freelance writer and translator to pay the bills. When it comes to hobbies, it's all about collecting things -- like the photos he shares on Flickr.
"I'm an obsessive-compulsive collector," Martin said. "It's something I've been doing since I was a kid."
