Cary Fagan imagines the unknowable history of found photographs.

CARY FAGAN PUTS NEW STORIES TO THE LOST WORLDS OF ABANDONED PHOTOGRAPHS

The Old World: And Other Stories By Cary Fagan House of Anansi 304 pp; $19.95

Antique stores usually have a box of old photos stashed away somewhere. They’re always a loose and un-curated collection picked up over the years, few from the same source. They often include posed photos of the long-dead, looking out proudly in uniforms or suits or dressed up for some unknown engagement. Photos of forgotten trips: a bus unloading passengers, a plane coming or going, a family all standing in front of a car. And there will be shots of scenery — whatever interested the photographer, lost without any context — plain buildings or an odd tree. It’s fun to flip through these glimpses of unknown lives and try to guess what, exactly, was going on.

Cary Fagan’s new collection, The Old World, imagines the unknowable history of a series of found photographs. As he writes in the book’s introduction, he wants to give the photos “stories to replace the ones they lost.” It’s a simple set-up that allows the author to play around with the short story: the pieces run just a few pages, each one short and punchy, ensuring the concept doesn’t get stale.

The photos Fagan has chosen reveal an era now dead long enough to be replaced with nostalgia — the cars are larger, the clothes vintage. The stories themselves are peopled with ma’s and pa’s and good harvests; people drive motorcars, shop in department stores, and The City is still a distant, unreachable dream for many of the characters.

While the photos give Fagan a starting point, the stories go far beyond the one moment captured on film. A picture of a soldier sitting in front of an old rotatory telephone accompanies The Call. The story expands on the scene, weaving in family guilt, a breakdown of duty and the sudden epiphany that a person’s misdeeds can come for many reason — and happen to anyone. A photo of a boy standing on a beach becomes a story of his mother worrying about his possible futures. And an image two children dancing is a springboard is described with the jealousy and drive of a show mom. All told in a tight prose that wastes none of the short space each story is given.

The photos let Fagan have some fun too. A young boy in a cowboy outfit inspired Bloody Tuesday, a childhood fantasy of the Old West as it would have seemed to a kid raised on 1950s Westerns — he’s the fastest gun in town and violence is the answer to pretty much any problem he’d need to face. But the kid’s imagination only goes so far; his understanding of sex is limited to spending time on the lap of a town “hoor” while she plays with his necktie.

Fagan is at his best when he fits entire lives into just a few short pages, as in You Should Have Come. A photo of two women departing a plane is used to tell the story of a young actor in an unknown country, recently taken over by a totalitarian government. He doesn’t realize how dire the situation is, and through a combination of stubbornness or wilful ignorance, he gets his family arrested, while he only just manages to escape. Decades later, the sisters he assumed were killed show up. Their story is not told, but the heavy implication of guilt and their hardship spills out in the devastating words that title the story.

Fagan builds a little world here, linking each story to the one before it. Sometimes the connection is natural — a dress a woman bought in one story is recommended by a character in the previous — and other times it’s a little more tenuous — a TV show one character writes for is watched by another. The connections can seem forced at times, but nonetheless serve as a reminder that everyone is just a few degrees of separation from anyone else, even if linked only by something as insignificant as a brand of boot preserver.

The collection closes, fittingly, on a class photo, with the story’s narrator recording what became of each child over the years. Details are scarce or not there at all — what is known is just a short sketch. Without the narrator, the photo loses all meaning; it’s just a class photos like thousands of others. But as with the other stories in The Old World, Fagan breathes life back into forgotten relics of an older age, stepping in where the original photographers are unable, telling their stories with understated emotion that is deep with hidden meanings. It’s a collection that is by turns charming, funny, and sad — just like any collection of randomly selected photos is sure to be.

FROM THE OLD WORLD: AND OTHER STORIES BY CARY FAGAN Photos chosen by Cary Fagan in his new book reveal an era long gone, but he wants to give the photos “new stories to replace the ones they lost.”