"Mania": strange collections and their owners in the Norwegian photographer's photo project

Kristine Wathne is a young and talented student photographer from Trondheim, Norway, who released her first photo album in 2016. It is called "Mania" and tells about seven different people and their unusual collections. The heroes collect very tight jeans, wedding dresses, souvenirs from Thailand, items from the 1950s and even ballpoint pens. According to Kristin, the creation of this photo project was prompted by her admiration for the unusual collectors, their fetishism and subculture.

Here are some photos from the album about very strange collectors.

(22 photos in total)

Source: Vice

Arve Mellevik has been collecting clothes from the 1980s for more than 20 years. There are about a hundred pairs of jeans and unisex tights in his closet. He says the narrower the better.

Jan Roger Elstad wanted to do something that he thought no one had done before. He found a bunch of wedding dresses in the trash and decided to keep them. Then, in 1991, he began to buy them himself and store them in the basement. Now there are more than 400 wedding dresses in his collection.

Harald Haraldsen travels whenever possible and has already traveled to more than 46 countries. He dedicated the most spacious part of the extravagant and souvenir-filled living room to his beloved country, Thailand, where he visited about 60 times. In the middle of the room on the floor there is a model of a Thai temple.

Karl-Erik Johansen dedicated his life and home to his love for the 1950s. When he was nine years old, he started buying records. Over time, he began to spend all his money only on them. When he grew up, his mother gave him an ultimatum: if he wanted to live in her house, he had to give up his habit of collecting, because things took up too much space. He immediately moved in with his 70,000 records. "I don't feel the need to get married or have children," he told the photographer. "This is my life, and I adore it."

Maria Toftum became interested in royal families when Princess Diana died in 1997. Now she constantly monitors the life of monarchs and maintains 20 public posts on Facebook, to which 10 thousand people have subscribed. There she posts photos of deceased kings and queens.

Ole Elvis Anderson started admiring Elvis Presley when he was 12 years old. In 1992, Andersen officially registered the name Elvis as his middle name, since everyone he knew called him Elvis anyway. His very religious parents constantly told him that he would go to hell if he did not stop being interested in rock. But Ole Elvis Anderson wasn't listening to them.

Rolf Ressem has more than 13 thousand pens, which he keeps in boxes, suitcases, and the best ones are in plastic files. He is a member of the pen lovers club, which has 400 like-minded people from all over the world. A few years ago, Ressem tried to break the Guinness World Record and become the owner of the world's largest collection of pens. Representatives of the Guinness Book of Records counted his pens for 48 hours, but, unfortunately, two pieces were not enough for him.