I had been going through a stretch of insomnia so I’d taken to sitting up during the night, smoking cigarettes by the window and flipping through old photo albums. I actually quit smoking many years ago but I bought a pack after the third night. And they weren’t my photo albums, they were my parents’—heavy books with plastic surfaces on the hard pages. The photos started as yellowed black-and-whites but later had a faded colour, like from the seventies. I had no idea why I had them, but I’d helped my parents move twice—the albums must have made their way here by accident. When I found them I didn’t give them back.

I didn’t start with the photo albums. I started with art books from university—beautiful, heavy, richly coloured volumes that were hard to throw away after school. I looked at Gauguin ...