I love to rummage through flea market boxes of old photographs. You never know what you are going to find ~ everything from the beautiful or bizarre to the mundane or humorous. Snapshots of moments gone by. A Google search for "found photographs" brought up a number of interesting websites, including Look at Me and Time Tales. More and more museums are collecting and exhibiting snapshots, including the National Gallery of Art, which opens The Art of the American Snapshot: The Collection of Robert E. Jackson in October. Each collector has his or her own distinct eye ~ and I find that fascinating too. One of the best shows I have seen in recent years was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Other Pictures: Anonymous Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection. I could go on and on, but will save it for a future post, and will perhaps show some of my own found photos.(image via Look at Me)
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A man I knew had a photo shop, one of those narrow shops on 8th Avenue near Times Square that processed photos. This was back in the 90s, before digital photography was accessible to the ordinary photographer. As I got to know him better he told me stories about his customers...the one who only printed the pictures of himself from his honeymoon; the Russians who loved to oooh and ahh at their photos but suddenly found something else to do before paying; and the man who was into a particular rough form of pornography. And then digital photography came along, and then his rent soared, and finally he closed his shop, taking with him the hundreds, perhaps even a thousand processed prints and rolls. The snapshot. His trove. And I never got to see them. I, too, love the snapshot.
Ooooh. Thank you for telling me about this man ~ an accidental keeper of so many snapshots. It's amazing to me that people can leave these things behind. My mother once gave me a vintage frame, with a photograph of a mother and daughter ~ her intention was that I use the frame for my own photograph. But, I can't bear to remove the original photograph ~ I somehow feel the need to take care of them, these two forgotten women.
Admirers of vinatge photographs will enjoy these Depression-era treasures:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/boundforglory/glory-exhibit.html
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