“Owls Head,” by Rosamond Purcell; the Quantuck Lane Press; 224 pages; $25, cloth.

Part archaeology, part taxonomy, part New England yarn, Rosamond Purcell’s “Owls Head” summons a photographer’s eye for detail to bring to life William Buckminster and the valuables he has spent his life collecting.

His scrapyard began as an antiques shop while his wife was still living. It now holds 11 acres of household objects, industrial scrap, antiques and curiosities from the four corners of the earth.

Purcell, an internationally acclaimed artist and photographer, spends endless hours combing his collection for treasures. Along the way, she gathers prized scraps of information about Buckminster himself.

Buckminster’s father, “a newcomer to Owls Head, died in a fire when his son was 3 years old, leaving behind a small boat and almost no money at all.” Buckminster remembers the objects that neighbors salvaged from the burning housepiles of doors and windows, an antique china cabinet, and a piano – the beginning, perhaps, of the sprawl that now threatens to overtake his property.

A labor of love, “Owls Head” details the 20-year friendship that grows between Purcell and Buckminster as she catalogs the “junk” that forms the sum total of his life. The result is uncanny yet lovely, a polished meditation on the beauty of decay, the comfort of objects and the human quest for meaning.

Purcell’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Getty Research Institute, Santa Monica and other museums.

Her work is in numerous collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the San Francisco Museum of Art.