‘There’s something comforting about it’: the collectors who won’t let go of their DVDs and videos

DVD collector Dr Ari Mattes, who is a lecturer in Communications & Media, and English Literature at the School of Arts & Sciences University of Notre Dame Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Olivia Bennett’s VHS collection started at a charity stall.

She had grown up in “the type of family where we’ll always have a movie on in the background,” she says, but it wasn’t until high school that her personal interest really bloomed. It was 2010 and DVD sales in Australia were booming. People were shedding their old VHS cassettes like dead skin.