Unlike the pioneers and prospectors of the Wild West, who dwelled in choleric, ramshackle camps and risked rickety mine shafts in hopes of striking it rich, today's treasure hunters trudge through the parks and junkyards within city limits.
The goal for these hobbyists is not the treasure itself, which is sometimes limited to items like doll heads, vintage glass bottles, and more marbles than will fit in your pockets. It's about the act of tracking down leads, traveling, and searching. It's a pursuit fueled by imagination, not greed.
Photographer Jenny Riffle tracked the expeditions of an urban treasure hunter she knows well, her boyfriend of almost 10 years, Riley. Through old dumps and river banks, Riffle followed Riley and documented his adventures for her series Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure Hunting.
“What I really wanted to do was show the character that he becomes and how I romanticize him into being this adventurer,” says Riffle. “Putting him up with Amelia Earhart and Davy Crocket. Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry Finn. The American mythology of this kind of person going out and exploring and discovering new things.”
Partially raised off the grid in a North Cascades cabin, Riffle's rustic bonafides and adventuresome spirit rival that of her subject. Their digging excursions are often social affairs with friends joining in, but as the series took shape Riffle began to frame Riley distant and in isolation. She avoided any tight close-ups or hints of familiarity during the hours spent seeking veins of esoteric curios.
Some of the old things end up being worth money. Riley’s first big score came when he was using a metal detector to survey a grassy parking strip and found a $300 ring. Even when the shovel is left at home he’s on the prowl for anything that might sell on eBay, from hitting up estate sales to snagging piles of old magazines on the street. But a lot of these old things end up being worthless on the market. Choice baubles come home to live with the couple.
The two enjoy striking out for unexplored lands but for treasure hunting, Riley has his favorite spots and returns to them often. One exception brought the couple to Vashon Island, seated in Puget Sound near their home of Seattle. Legend has it a logger stashed gold there a hundred years back, and Riley charted its likely location. They came up empty, but the day wasn’t lost.
“The reality of it is we went to the side of the road, we dug around for a couple hours and we found nothing," she says. "But the romanticized idea of just going off to find this man’s gold is what I’m trying to capture in the image that I made.”
History is rife with blood spilled over caches of gold, but even aimless scavenging can be a competitive pastime. Riley has smoothed over territorial pissing matches in the past, even working out a trade agreement with a fellow prospector working the beaches of Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn’s old dump.
Still, puppy dog eyes and a boyish grin don’t always save your skin. Riley was 86’d from another old dump, the arboretum in Seattle, after being caught digging holes by a park employee. Fortunately Riffle and he were moving to the east coast for her graduate studies, lending time for the heat die down. Since returning to the Pacific Northwest Riley has quietly returned to his old treasure trove.
Riffle shares the appreciation for old things, but is less committed to the pursuit.
“I have always been a collector. Old cameras and ephemera and postcards and stuff like that,” Riffle says. “But I don’t have the drive that Riley has. I’m not going to dig a big hole. That’s too much work. But I will go to the beach, the old dump in New York and just walk the beach and find things. I love finding old weird, strange things as long as I don’t have to spend two hours digging.”
Scavenger opened this week at San Francisco’s Rayko Photo Center.
