Lost and Found Photos

Lost Camera Story

People have been posting stories of lost cameras in the comments section on my Craiglist entry HERE. Scroll down and you can read the stories.  While there are many options for alerting the public about losing a camera, feel free to email me your story and I'll post it.  Because this is part of a research project, I won't put your email address on the post.  Let's see how many people send stories.  I may set up a separate page for these stories.  There is a great website www.ifoundyourcamera.net that tries to reunite losers with finders.

LOST CAMERA STORY
Hello,
I was traveling on a Greyhound bus between August 9th - 10th of 2008.
I'm sure its ended up at a pawn shop by now but I have hope.
Some of the pics on the memory card are my trip to California at San Pedro, a boat ride to the Queen Mary, and pictures downtown Long Beach,Ca.
As a reward:
WHOEVER FINDS OR HAS THE CAMERA, YOU CAN KEEP THE CAMERA, I JUST WANT THE PICTURES.
The pictures are on a memory card.
AGAIN: I just want the pictures..you can keep the camera.
Thank you.

Here is a pic of my lost camera:

Precious photos lost, found and returned to sender

Precious photos lost, found and returned to sender
Article from the Miami Herald. Read it HERE. Quote below from article.

"The light blue photo album filled with irreplaceable black-and-white memories of a 1930s childhood spent in Coral Gables was strewn on the floor of a Postal Service sorting facility in Pembroke Pines.

No return address. No hint of its destination. Puzzled postal clerks only had pictures and captions as clues." 

Superbomba

, originally uploaded by superbomba.

Flickr user Superbomba has a large collection of found photographs. Click on the link below the photograph (superbomba) to see more.

SquareAmerica: On the Beauty of Absence

SquareAmerica features many online exhibits.  See one of the most recent exhibits titled, On the Beauty of Absence.  It features images of album pages where photographs no longer reside.  SquareAmerica writes: "A Small show of accidental abstractions: 13 pages from an album I recently picked up in which almost all of the photos had either fallen out or been removed."

Phoundfotographs: The Photographer's Shadow

Phoundfotographs is featuring an online exhibit titled, The Photographer's Shadow.  Photo below from exhibit. I think this is my favorite one. See the man in the background taking a photo?

Barbara Levine: Remember Me / Memory Snapshots

Barbara Levine's Remember Me / Memory Snapshots exhibit features photographs of people with personal photographs. Photo in a photo. 
 

Meggan Gould: Verso

Verso by Meggan Gould examines the reverse side of family and anonymous found photographs.  Gould writes: "Hints of text, stamped numbers, tape and glue marks, all relics of a pre-pixel age, invite the viewer to construct their own photographic image on an imagined reverse side. "  Image below from series. Gould also wrote about this project on her blog HERE.

WWII bag found

A Flickr member posted a link to this video on a message board. I can not find that message now. Just wanted to give credit. . . but I can't find that message now. Ahhh.

Floods sweeping away homes

HERE is a story from MSNBC.  The Fromm family lost their home to the flood waters.  Here is a quote from the story.  There are many more stories like this. . .

“Everything that we have is gone,” Tim Fromm told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer Wednesday. “You can replace furniture and TVs and everything else. [But] it’s the memories. We have no pictures of our younger daughters anymore. We had binders and binders and books of all the kids growing up.”

Billy Parrott's Found photographs in pocket watches

Billy Parrot has a number of found photo projects at BillyParrott.com.  See his use of found photographs in pocket watches HERE.

Alexander Honory & Joachim Schmid

THIS is another site (Galeria FF) I found while looking for Honory's "The lost pictures."  There is an essay on the site by Lech Lechowicz: "Collections which restore usefulness to found photography" 

Lechowicz writes: "For those artists the image contained in found photographs is significant, but only as a part of often complicated image structures and contents, like photomontage. In both cases what is less important, and sometimes simply insignificant, is the private, "personal" content, connected with each picture's past. This private, "personal" content is the result of the intention of the person who took the photograph and the intention of the person to whom it belonged. It is the owner of photographs who gives them their opulent content, rather unattainable for other people." 

Things magazine - Because you're worth it

I found THIS small exhibit today ("Because you're worth it") while looking for Alexander Honory's The Lost Pictures (which I read about in Martin Parr's The Photobook: a history, volume 2) It's from Things Magazine.  An interesting site.  Photo below from "Because you're worth it." 

tinywindows: Blog

Jeanne Storck's tinywindows is a wonderful source for information and critical writing about "found" photographs.  Check out THIS post.  Storck writes: "We tend to think of found photos as existing solely in the physical world, pieces of paper from the past covered with chemical emulsion and unknown faces, but the Internet opens up a whole new universe of vernacular photography where the images are less tangible, more ephemeral and free from the bonds of ownership. It’s a vast community-owned pool of images."  Yes. YES. Go read tinywindows. You'll be glad you did.  If I can't remember how I found some interesting photography site, there is a good chance I found it at tinywindows.

TheFoundBin.com

TheFoundBin.com features a category titled: All Lost and Found Media.  Go HERE to see posts.  Here is a short excerpt from a post:

"the contents of the unit may have been auctioned off, a big identifier would be about 200 1:18 scale model cars. what i am trying to locate is family photos, among them would be the only prints of my and my 2 daughters baby and childhood pictures"

Coming Home: Dateline story

Dateline featured THIS story last week.  Vietnam War: American soldier picks up a photograph of a little girl from the pocket of the Vietnam soldier he shot and killed.  Coming Home tells the story of that photograph. They have the entire transcript on their website.  Here is a quote from the transcript.

"I seen this picture sticking out partially out. It looked like (closes eyes) the face of a little girl with some long hair or something. And I pulled it out and it was real tiny. And it was a picture of a soldier and a little girl. I can remember holding the photo and actually squatting and getting close to the soldier and actually looking in his face and looking at the photo, and looking at his face.

Here was the man he had just killed. But who was that little girl? His daughter?

They seemed so serious. So, sad, somehow. Like the picture was taken just before they said goodbye. Before her father went off to war."

Stolen Wallet Story

My dissertation adviser sent me the article above last year.  You can read about the missing wallet HERE.  "There was no money in the wallet, but it contained Val's Navy ID, a copy of his Augusta birth certificate and more than a dozen photos."

Found Meat Photographs in Meatpaper Magazine

Meatpaper #2(a magazine about meat) contains an article about found photographs featuring meat titled: Conspicuous Consumption: A Portfolio of found meat photography.  Author Abner Nolan writes: "I was interested in describing the evolution of the meat-centered meal, from a visit to the butcher to preparation and consumption."

Women & Cameras

I have purchased a few more photographs off of eBay featuring women and cameras.  I've bid on a number of auctions, but I've lost to other bidders.  There are lots of people who probably collect these kinds of images.  Here are a few of the photographs I've won.  Also, the new banner above features one of the photographs I purchased on eBay.


 

I didn't lose my photos; I lost 6 years of my life.

Pnia sent me her story a few months ago.  She found my site and asked if I'd put her story on it.  Her desire is to find more information about her life.  A few short sentences from her story below. You can read her entire story she sent me HERE.

Excerpt: My name is Pnina Gutman. I am 65 years old.  I began the search for my biological identity in April 1996. I called this project " Who am I what's my name ?"

I didn't lose my photos; I lost 6 years of my life. 6 years of documentation. I then found some people who gave me photos and told me some details about the 5 years and 4 months of the years I lost. . .

This situation seemed strange to me. Why did I have to be introduced to my parents ? I also remember a Polish family and their handsome son named Bogdan. I remember a beautiful church that appeared decorated with gold.  We used to pray there. . .

I kept all those facts and memories in a secret drawer of my mind. . .

When I was brought to Charlotta in the white wooden pram, I had around my neck a note saying my name was Barbara Wenglinski.

Lost photos Found on Youtube

I found this video created by Mr. Kaufman on Youtube. I emailed and asked him if I could feature it here. He said "yes." Here it is.  Click on the Youtube category to see other Youtube movies I've embedded here. Or just go to Youtube and look around using the search term "lost" photo or "found" photos. There are many.

Facebook.

A voicemail from a caller about Facebook:

Facebook.  4 years ago I was teaching a course titled Autobiographical Media. During the semester the college got Facebook. Students were excited.  Facebook is no longer the dorm, but the world.  Anybody, everybody.   In a class I am currently teaching titled Lost and Found Media, we frequently talk about photos on Facebook.  Here are two articles that discuss what might be lost OR found on Facebook.

Two articles of interest. The Impersonal life: Chronicling life in the digital age by J. Macneill Miller.  Miller writes: "Social norms dictate that most snapshots be taken with friends, relatives, and teammates, so amateur photographers have a difficult time finding pictures of themselves alone. In order to create a personal portrait, they visually wrench themselves from their social contexts, cropping tightly to eliminate other people. These incisions are not always clean, and the results often look like photographs from Nikki S. Lee's 2005 "Parts" series, featuring stray arms, cheeks, and noses intruding into the supposedly personal frame."

Facebook kills your memories by Sascha Segan. Segan writes:  "But years down the road, we're all going to regret it when we try to delve into our boxes of virtual memories and find they aren't there, or we just get tired of having to visit several different sites to check up on our friends."

Swapatorium

Swapatorium.  More than found photos.  Angelica is collecting the world of everyday life and giving some of it away.   See her category titled "Freebies."  While I've read through many of her posts on the blog, THIS is my favorite.  Angelica writes: "Sorting is a long process because I record where I bought the items in my notebook, as well as the price and any background notes. I then tag the photos with a number/letter that corresponds with the entry."  A look in to the practices of the (serious) collector.

Links and More Links

I have 182 links on the left side of this site.  Still organizing the links into  categories. The blog service I use for this site (Typepad) gives you some basic stats about your blog. How many visitors. . . Sometimes you can see what people  clicked on to get to your site.  When I started putting this site together, I thought I had done an extensive search on the web for "lost and found" photo sites.  Yet, I always find one that somehow has escaped the search engines or my own keyword searches.  HERE (www.ausgang.com) is a site I don't think I've seen before.  I say "I don't think" because sometimes I look at a site and think I've never seen it before, but then I find a print out of the page with my notes on it. . .

Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost

A friend dropped this book (A field guide to getting lost) by my office for me to look at.  It is this quote from the introduction that I love.   

“Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing”

Snapshot Chronicles by Barbara Levine

Barbara Levine writes in her book about early American photo albums:  "Open the cover slowly, feeling the rough nubbiness of the familiar (usually black) paper, sometimes crumbling in my hand.  Photo albums are transformative. As soon as I open the cover there is a rush of feeling that something I was never meant to see is in my hands.  As I turn the pages, I am activating a story."

Levine's book presents entire pages culled from "found" photo albums.  See my photo of the book above. The photo is inverted because it was taken with  my web cam.

As I make my categories for my big pile of links on the side of this page, I find Levine difficult to categorize. She's an author (also see Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums). She's a dealer. She is an exhibition specialist. She's an artist.  See her Projectb.com for more information.

I recently purchased the photograph  below from her.  I cropped it. I took this one with my web cam too.  Woman taking a photo.

Links to eBay dealers

I've started organizing the 170 or so links I have on the left side of this page.  I'm creating categories (exhibits, dealers, artists, etc).  I just added the eBay dealer list. I know there are more dealers than are in this list.   HERE is a link that will take you to the pre-1940 category of photographic images on eBay.  I recently purchased the photograph below from a dealer on eBay.

Close to Home: An American Album at the Getty

Close to Home: An American Album exhibit at the Getty is long gone. . . But the Getty still has info about the show up on their site.  The most interesting (besides the description of the show--I'm compiling descriptions of vernacular photos shows. . . similarities / differences / discourses) part of the site is the invitation to submit your own photographs.  The invitation (I believe) has expired.  You can see the submissions HERE.

There is also a section that features Getty staff talking (you can hear the audio) about their favorite snapshots. Go HERE to see and listen.

The Art of the American Snapshot moves to Texas

The Art of the American Snapshot is now open at the Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth , TX).  Feb 16 - April 27.  A talk titled "Are snapshots really art?" will be given on March 27.  Click HERE for more info.  Robert E. Jackson's collection of snapshots was previously shown at the National Gallery. 

The book that features photos from this exhibit is beautiful. 

Ifoundyourcamera.net & crowdsourcing

Misty Harris (Canwest News Service) article, Say cheese--your lost photos may show up on the Internet.  She covers the recent lost camera endeavor: ifoundyourcamera.net. 

Lose your digital camera with memory card (your 2 gig memory card with 400 photos of _____  ? <-- insert subject here.  Visit ifoundyourcamera.net

Is this crowd sourcing? I think it is.  The genealogy sites are utilizing or exercising or engaging in crowdsourcing aren't they? I think so. 

Wired magazine article about crowdsourcing HERE.

A new book being written about crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe. Read about it HERE.  Definition of crowdsourcing on his page: "Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call."

Lost Cameras on Craigslist.com

There are a number of stories of lost & found cameras on Craigslist.com.  I created a list of cities on the left side (scroll down) with links to "lost & found cameras."  While people describe the cameras (most are digital), many are more interested in getting the memory card back. 

"lost my digital camera around the 15th of january if you found a kodak silver camera please let me know it has a memory card in it and i would really apreciate it if i could get it back please"

"Lost Olympus camera in Atlanta airport. Contains 500 pictures from vacation in Italy. Would just like the memory card back, please. Reward offered.."

"If stolen, please return SD card (have a heart)"

Some describe the photos on the camera for identity purposes:

"You can tell its mine when you look at all the saved photos, there will be tons and tons of pictures of tarantulas, scorpions and so on."