Found Photographs

The meaning embedded in the private photograph is derived from and dependent upon, the viewer’s intimate knowledge of the people in the pictures. Miles Orvill suggests that found photographs, once full of meaning, are now ‘transformed into opaque signs, telling us little or nothing about the individual pictured’ p144

Photographs of dead and long forgotten people end up in flea markets across the world. Images without provenance, they disclaim authorship but are given new authors by the act of selection by the person collecting them. These new owners then invest the collections with a new history in fictional form and allow the viewer to d the same.

Such images travel from the private to the public domain and, somehow, become Art along the way.

Many artists and photographers have made use of found images in their work.

Alexander Honory, for example, made compilations of found christening, wedding, funeral or family reunion photographs:

These images serve to document the lives (or one aspect of same) of the subjects whilst at the same time allow us to make inferences about how the subjects see themselves. (Arguably not the case where minors are concerned, who might not have a say in the composition of the photograph or even the event itself.)

Another artist, Joachim Schmid, collects family photographs such as German families in the 1950s, when the war was still very much in the collective memory. These images are of ordinary people, striking ordinary poses. When these family photographs are removed from their original (private) context and repurposed through appropriation they become fiction (an alternative reality?) and take on a whole new narrative of their own.

Many people admire this practice of appropriation and revere it as an artform. Others are less kind:

"Joachim Schmid is a thief and a liar. For twenty years Schmid has been taking other people's photographs and using them for his own purposes." Stephen Bull, Cefugio Gallery

Joachim Schmid 'Pictures From the Street'

Alexandra Artey researched Hilda Thompson and her daughters June and Hilda, who killed their abusive father. These snapshots of family life hide a menacing subplot of physical and mental cruelty which is simply not evident from looking at the pictures – the family snapshot, therefore, may not lie but it doesn’t always reveal the whole truth either. We believe it to be real and truthful because it is unposed: snapshot as propaganda.

From private to public

So... what was once a private collection has turned full circle and is once more in one person's hands - that of the artist. The difference is, the new owner can do whatever she wishes with the images, including publishing them on the web and, as Schmid and Honory do, repurpose them for their own ends.

Frederic Bonn's website Look at me - a collection of found photos is an amazingly eclectic compilation of found photographs submitted by anyone who cares to upload them. The site is fascinating - why? Do we hope to come across a picture of someone we know? Do we enjoy the random and unpredictable nature of the subject matter? Or do we simply enjoy gawping at strangers from the recent past?

There are ethical considerations here: the descendents of these subjects are still alive; they may stumble across images of their relatives in a starkly different context, to which they might react with displeasure, shock or unbridled excitement.

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References

Orvell, M. American Photography (Oxford History of Art) OUP 2003.

URLs

All sites accessed and working 4/07/06

Alexander Honory and Joachim Schmid

Look at me - a collection of found photos