Found Photography
Some people collect photographs they find literally lying around. It’s an unusual but intruiging, and increasingly popular, pursuit. Look into the lives of others; the next time you see a photograph lying about, abandoned, pick it up, and you’re on your way toward exploration of the world of vernacular photography.
By Eric Rudolph
Who hasn’t glanced over a stranger’s shoulder as they’re reviewing their fresh photo prints at the photo counter?
Who isn’t interested in a random glimpse into the lives of others?
Turns out there’s an institutionalized approach to seeing other people’s photos, and it doesn’t involve working at the neighborhood 1-Hour lab.
It’s called found photography.
They’ve got an awful lot of photos in America, and a surprising amount of them go missing.
People find these pictures, and many people who find photos treasure them. (There’s at least one magazine, Found [http://www.foundmagazine.com/], and several Web sites.)
This category is also known as vernacular photography, and acceptance of this type of non-art photography as, ironically, art, has grown in recent decades. The influence of vernacular work can be seen in mainstream photography of many kinds today. And collecting of this sort of work ha also boomed recently.
Librarian Gina Landi of Jackson Heights in New York City is one of these found photography collectors. She’s been accumulating found photos for 20 years, since she came across a contemporary photo of a lively-looking young couple posed in front of a shelf full of stuffed animals (photo, at left). The picture was lying on the floor in the library where she worked.
There’s abundant mystery inherent in these wayward photos, Landi explains: who are these people, what are they doing, why was this photo taken and why is it lying around abandoned?
Some of these found photos are funny and some have a haunting, innocent and unforced beauty.
However, it isn’t just anonymous citizens and their stuffed critters that populate the found photography world. Landi found several pictures of Senator Ted Kennedy, taken in a boardroom setting, on the ground on East 86th St. in Manhattan. Across town on the west side she found shots of Vogue editor (and model for the wicked fashion editor in the book and movie The Devil Wears Prada) Anna Wintour, wearing a “crazy gold dress” at a party.
Several of Landi’s found Polaroids were included in a book, Found Polaroids, recently published by Found magazine.
And literally finding the photos is key for Landi; searching for them in thrift stores or other likely venues is just not the way to go.
“Finding them is the thing,” she says. “It is a total serendipity,” and that’s a big part of the fun. Landi gets her found photos by chance encounters on the streets of New York City, or from friends who find them and pass them along.
Pictures of people in their environments are her favorite subjects, for the look into other lives, lives into which one would never otherwise have any entrée.
She comes across photos from different eras, but her favorite is the 1970s. “The ‘70s pictures have the funniest clothes and hair,” just great kitsch value, she says with affectionate delight.
11/19/07
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