PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES
WE MAY NOT KNOW THEIR NAMES BUT THERE’S AN UNDENIABLE APPEAL TO FAMILY PHOTOS. THE GENTLE ACT OF UNEARTHING ‘ FOUND PHOTOGRAPHS’ IS A WAY OF EXPLORING AND EMBRACING OUR RECENT PAST, BOTH OUR DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES
Two women tentatively walk towards the water; a couple pose on foldaway chairs, behind the blanket of a car picnic; a man grins from inside the impressively large hole that he’s dug on the beach. These aren’t snapshots from my own family photo album – in fact, I don’t know who the people are or any of the specifics of their situation – but they feel like they could be. These are all examples of ‘found photography’ – images found at car boots and auctions, discovered in second-hand shops or even skips – their intimacy and immediacy helping explain why they’re so popular among collectors.
The images here, dating from the 1950s and 60s, come from Lee Shulman’s collection of more than 800,000 slides, presented online as The Anonymous Project (anonymous-project.com), and also in the book When We Were Young. Lee began his collection in 2017 when he purchased a box of slides online “on a nostalgic whim.” He describes the experience that got him hooked: “I picked out the first slide and held it up to the light. This little window into the past seemed so precious, a capsule containing a family memory once lost in time now brought back to life.”
As people move on and lives shift, millions of physical films, slide and photographic prints find their way to the second-hand market. Lee is just one of many enthusiasts seeking out memories that would otherwise be lost to time. They have an everyday appeal – rather than being the stuff preserved in museums, these photos appeal because they’re the kind of things we record ourselves: holidays, parties, weddings, births, and good times. The difference is that, today, our preference for digital means that many would have been deleted along the way, as we attempt the ‘perfect’ shot. For Lee, in found photographs, it’s “their imperfections [that] make them all the more arresting and beautiful.”
As with any collection, part of the appeal of the hunt is the promise of rediscovery. Just think of the now-acclaimed work of Vivian Maier, whose four decades’ worth of street photography was only seen by the wider world when the negatives were developed and put online by John Maloof ( he’d purchased them as part of a wider book project about Chicago). Meanwhile, Liverpool’s The Hardman’s House – formally a photographic studio – released historic photographs of the city’s streets, developed from film rolls found by the National Trust at the property. Sometimes these rediscoveries bring hidden
histories to light, as with 340 photographs taken at ‘Casa Susanna’. Now exhibited in museums, they record a weekend destination for gender nonconformists in the mid 20th century. Unearthed in a New York flea market, they’re now seen by a wider audience than they ever were intended for, offering a visual rebuttal to stereotypical ideas of the 1950s.
But even noting what these found photos don’t show can be a lesson in itself. Despite the scale of his collection, Shulman highlights the lack of images he’s found that show people of non-white backgrounds. The lack of diversity doesn’t reflect the stats of the UK population in the period he collects – but photography was still “expensive, an undeniably privileged white middle-class pastime,” he explains. The images therefore become “important historical documents that lay witness to this lack of representation.”
While we’ll never know the “truths” that lay behind each image, or the myriad stories frozen in one frame, found photography does tap into the very human desire to celebrate, to note and record what’s dear to us. Lee captures their particular charm well, “I remember many of these moments in time and yet they are not mine. They belong to us all.” »
FINDING YOUR FOCUS
How to start your collection
While you can easily buy old photographs online, it’s probably more fun to begin in the flesh, at an antique shop or car boot. Taking your time rifling through photographs and figuring out what kind of images appeal to you is part of the enjoyment of collecting. Many collectors find themselves drawn to particular themes – such as Libby Hall (whose collection is now in the Bishopsgate Archive) who sought out dog photos from the 1960s on, or Jochen Raiß, who unexpectedly started spotting vintage images of women posing in trees (see The Simple Things issue 60/June 2017). Or you could look for images from a specific era. It might be worth learning about photographic developments – the kind of photos taken when – to help with dating. If you’re interested in value, keep eyes peeled for significant people or events, and you want the photos in good condition. But there’s no point in starting a collection if you don’t enjoy the hunt itself – as with the photographs themselves, it’s all about the process(ing).
Slide show
Ideas for your found photographs
l Give them some exposure Enthusiasts can upload discoveries to the Flickr pool, ‘The Museum of Found Photographs’, currently featuring more than 112K photos. If relevant, you could donate finds to the UK’s Museum of Youth Culture, a photographic record of the lives of young people over the last century. Or start your own social account, such as @discoveringlostsouls, who also sells on Etsy, and @foundphotouk, the collection of Dawn Parsonage, drawn from more than 25 years of collecting. l It’s a snap! Can you find out more about the people or places in your photographs? The archive of the
Belle Vue photographic studio in Bradford – spanning the 1920s to the 1970s – was rescued from a skip. As the images were shared, many sitters were identified by family members. Likewise, last year William Fagan shared his found images of a couple photographed on a European tour widely, as he attempted to find out their identities to pass on the images to their relatives. l They’ve been framed If you find images that you love, frame and honour the photographs in your own home. Or use them as transfers to print onto candles or fabric. l See what develops Found photographs have been artistic prompts since the Surrealists.
Why not use them for collage
(see the work of Belgian artist
Sammy Slabbinck) or combine with embroidery? We love the colourful geometric embroidery of Welsh artist Francesca Colussi Cramer (@colussicramer) and Han Cao’s ‘Quarantine collection’, featuring beautifully sewn masks (hanwriting. com). There’s a handy how-to tutorial if you search ‘embroidered postcards’ on blog.etsy.com. You could even use them to create your own collection of greetings cards. l Picture the person Often as soon as we look at a found photograph, we start speculating about their lives. They can be a rich creative writing prompt as you try to imagine the person behind the image.