Anyone Else Collect "Found" Images?

Kino · Mar 23, 2007

Walking through my favorite thrift store today, I spotted a factory Kodak Cavalcade Silide Box Storage unit.

Now, I am a sucker for old Kodachromes and this box promised a possible treasure trove of said delectibles... and I was not disappointed.

Look at those images! Who in their right mind would throw them out? I now have 14 trays to pick through and find these time capsule treasures. If nothing else I just like looking at them.

Looks like someone coming out of WWII bought the Seaplane they piloted off the Alaska coast and started their own flying charter tours, or .. ???

Anyone else out there collect like I do? What do you eventually plan on doing with your collections?

TheFlyingCamera · Mar 23, 2007

I'm a bit pickier, I mostly go for late 19th/early 20th century stuff, with specific subjects, like old cars or good architecture. But the color in those is terrific.

Bob F. · Mar 23, 2007

Kino said:
... Looks like someone coming out of WWII bought the Seaplane they piloted off the Alaska coast and started their own flying charter tours, or .. ??? ...

I can't help but think that their choice of stewardesses was somewhat less than perfect in attracting customers...

Wonderful colours though! Do you know what film? [edit: Oh, sorry, you said: Kodachrome! ]

Cheers, Bob.

tony lockerbie · Mar 23, 2007

I probably shouldn't promote another site but go to photo.net and look up a fellow called Gene M, you'll find him in the forums section under classic cameras,
He is quite an entertaining guy and has heaps of photos that he has rescued from old found cameras.
Tony

Kino · Mar 23, 2007

TheFlyingCamera said:
I'm a bit pickier, I mostly go for late 19th/early 20th century stuff, with specific subjects, like old cars or good architecture. But the color in those is terrific.

Well you need to throw a few dogs in the pile; makes your sense of appreciation all the greater...

The Kodak, Fuji and Agfa empires (such as they are/were) were built on crappy home snaps; celebrate the underwriting of fine images with klinkers.

Sparky · Mar 23, 2007

Wasn't that how someone put together Wisconsin Death Trip? Found images? There are all kinds of fascinating narratives one could put together with those.

Kino · Mar 23, 2007

Yes! Make up stories, ancestors, etc....

Hmmmm.

Alaska Death Trip... "this is just before Aunt Winnefred walked into the propeller of the aeroplane and was decapitated..."

Frank R · Mar 23, 2007

I purchased an old photo album a few months ago at an antique store. It was put together by a young lady and had photos of her and her friends; a few were rather creative. A lot of innocent inscriptions written on the pages made it kind of charming. All were taken before WWI.

Kino · Mar 23, 2007

It really makes you think about how people lived in a time you will never fully comprehend...

A photo of a great, great uncle who would be shell-shocked in WWI...

copake_ham · Mar 23, 2007

Those old Kodachromes are amazing! How wonderfully well the colors have held for what looks to be fifty or more years. Snappies they are - but so are most old photos!

It's kind of sad to think that some descendent of the folks pictured probably just saw the slides as junk and the only good thing is that at least they didn't just put them in the garbage and, instead, sent them to a thrift store.

When I think of the stack of boxed carousels I have (mostly K-chromes, too) and how likely they are to at least suffer the same fate - I get a bit depressed....

Kino · Mar 23, 2007

copake_ham said:
Those old Kodachromes are amazing! How wonderfully well the colors have held for what looks to be fifty or more years. Snappies they are - but so are most old photos!

It's kind of sad to think that some descendent of the folks pictured probably just saw the slides as junk and the only good thing is that at least they didn't just put them in the garbage and, instead, sent them to a thrift store.

When I think of the stack of boxed carousels I have (mostly K-chromes, too) and how likely they are to at least suffer the same fate - I get a bit depressed....

True, true!

It is depressing to think that the vast majority of images taken in the last Century will be thrown out without a second look because they are "old" or "obsolete"; but then again in the US, we have never had much respect for things historical anyway; Can you say "urban renewal"?

Anyway, a thought has been running around in my head as what to do with the keepers I find; no way am I going to keep them all! I wonder what the ramifications would be of placing them in one of the free stock image databases on the Web? The ones listed under the GNU or some Open Source "free" license; open and free to the public domain?

I highly doubt you could copyright found images and I have found in the last year or so, that archives that formerly would take photos and slides have drastically cut back on ingesting "orphan" works until copyright issues with these types of work have been cleared up.

It is a mess...

Sparky · Mar 23, 2007

I'm not sure if what you wrote was in reference to the 'copyright' issue. But I do believe that if you were to drastically change the context and, therefore, meaning of the photos à la wisconsin death trip, that you could claim copyright to that unique work. The issues are not so much different from sampling in the music world (however - there, alot of what is 'borrowed' is not effectively distanced and therefore suffers from copyright infringement problems).

big_ben_blue · Mar 23, 2007

A couple of years ago I found a large box of Kodakchromes of some family's trip to asia circa 1960's or early 70's at a local fleahmarket (in a heap of junk in the "rubbish" section, where they keep everything from broken shoes, 8track players, stuffed toys with missing heads, velvet elvis paintings, mutilated barbie dolls... you get the idea). There must have been a few hundred of the slides, and I can't imagine why anyone would throw out all these memories. Why I am fascinated by these images I honestly don't know; maybe it's the inner voyeur in me, getting a quick peek into a moment of the life of someone else.

copake_ham · Mar 24, 2007

big_ben_blue said:
A couple of years ago I found a large box of Kodakchromes of some family's trip to asia circa 1960's or early 70's at a local fleahmarket (in a heap of junk in the "rubbish" section, where they keep everything from broken shoes, 8track players, stuffed toys with missing heads, velvet elvis paintings, mutilated barbie dolls... you get the idea). There must have been a few hundred of the slides, and I can't imagine why anyone would throw out all these memories. Why I am fascinated by these images I honestly don't know; maybe it's the inner voyeur in me, getting a quick peek into a moment of the life of someone else.

This is similar to my thinking.

It's a bit of a "lives, lived" curiousity.

When I see these kinds of photos (to be honest - simple snapshots), I put myself in the photographer's place - the person behind the lens is what interests me.

The images are of her/his life. He/she was recording an event of personal importance. And exactly because it is so personal (and often banal) that it is unimportant to anyone else and thus winds up at best in a fleamarket - perhaps, sadly, more often in a landfill.

There is also, sometimes a bit of serendipity about what else one can learn. Looking at the second photo particularly; there are some who could identify the place, and perhaps time such a pic would have been taken. There are "clues" there (e.g. it is certaily either British Columbia or Alaska - note the totem pole motif; and it is summertime - see the green grass and hanging plants on the building in the background. Yet cool enough that the women are wearing long coats and rather "formally" dressed. Late middle-aged and with no children this is likely a "trip of a lifetime" etc. etc.).

Oh the speculations one can spin!

patrickjames · Mar 24, 2007

I love "found" photos. Every year at Photo L.A. my friend Paul shares a booth with a man named Carl Mautz who specializes in found/vernacular photography. I always budget time to look at the images he has. They are fascinating, and they never dissapoint.

Patrick

Roger Hicks · Mar 24, 2007

big_ben_blue said:
There must have been a few hundred of the slides, and I can't imagine why anyone would throw out all these memories.

We have hundreds of my late father-in-law's slides, because no-one else wanted them. We have in fact thrown quite a few out, because they are terminally dull. Others are fascinating from a family viewpoint, but only a few are of general interest.

Why would anyone throw out these memories? Because they have ceased to be memories. The people to whom they meant anything have died; there is nothing remarkable in generic snapshots; you can't keep everything.

Don't get me wrong. I keep LOTS of stuff and a couple of weeks ago my regular AP back-page column was about this sort of aleatory immortality. But I can see why some people throw out some stuff.

Cheers,

R.

removed account4 · Mar 24, 2007

hi kino

i haven't done it in a while,
but i used to regularly go to junk stores
and buy old photographs.

i have a few family + vacation albums, high school senior portraits
from 1923 ( the entire class ) and some other random stuff.

the vacation-stuff is all from egypt and parts of the ancient world,
as well as picnics in the woods.

the portraits ... they are all formal. the tonality &C is so beautiful
and the high school students are all very serious,
they look like they are all in their 40s.

John Bartley · Mar 24, 2007

Here's a person who also likes old photos, but this website is about undeveloped rolls that are abandoned, so they haven't even become memories yet ..... and never will be.

http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm

cheers eh?

BarryWilkinson · Mar 24, 2007

Bob F. said:
I can't help but think that their choice of stewardesses was somewhat less than perfect in attracting customers...

Cheers, Bob.

Very good Bob

Barry

Kino · Mar 24, 2007

Roger Hicks said:
Why would anyone throw out these memories? Because they have ceased to be memories. The people to whom they meant anything have died; there is nothing remarkable in generic snapshots; you can't keep everything.

R.

Roger,

True, true; I contradicted myself later in the post by saying I wouldn't keep them all either, so I agree.

There are some slots that are empty in the slide trays, so maybe a handful were taken for a keepsake.

So, in that vein, I agree; glean the aesthetically, historically and even unusual images and toss the rest (or transform them somehow - bricolage -- there, that word cost me $30K US and 6 years in at the University...).

It would be a cool performance art piece to take a thousand abandoned slide projectors, fill them with discarded slides and place them in a large, (well powered) dark room and project them continuously on the floors, walls and celling so you could walk around and wonder at what happened to those people...

Kino · Mar 24, 2007

jnanian said:
hi kino

i haven't done it in a while,
but i used to regularly go to junk stores
and buy old photographs.

i have a few family + vacation albums, high school senior portraits
from 1923 ( the entire class ) and some other random stuff.

the vacation-stuff is all from egypt and parts of the ancient world,
as well as picnics in the woods.

the portraits ... they are all formal. the tonality &C is so beautiful
and the high school students are all very serious,
they look like they are all in their 40s.

jnanian,

I have this pet theory that states that, as a general rule, the formality and dignity of the person being photographed is directly proportional to the cost of the photograph Vs the subjects income.

I find all photographs interesting at some level; sometimes you have to wonder what went through a person's mind when they pushed the shutter.

Now, no nasty comments from the peanut gallery!

Katharine Thayer · Mar 24, 2007

I don't collect found images as a rule, but I did buy an album of old family photos once and was really fascinated with it. I spent a lot of time poring over the pictures and making up stories about how the people were related to each other. There was very little text to provide context, only a date, 1915, and the name of a town in Nebraska. They are wonderful if only for the women's outfits and for the portrayal of American women during WWI. There were only a couple of photos of men, pictured in uniform in the company of other uniformed men; the bulk of the pictures in the album were of women. I decided that the women, sisters and sisters-in-law, had moved into the family home while their husbands were away in the war.

When I was starting out to print in gum bichromate, I photocopied some of these photos onto transparencies to use for negatives to practice with. (My darkroom equipment was in storage at the time, so it was the only way I could think of to make negatives.) Here's one of those practice prints, that shows one of the great hats these women wore. It's on my site as part of a demonstration of some of the different kinds of negatives that can be used to make gum prints:

http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/hat.html
Katharine

Roger Hicks · Mar 24, 2007

Kino said:
So, in that vein, I agree; glean the aesthetically, historically and even unusual images and toss the rest (or transform them somehow - bricolage -- there, that word cost me $30K US and 6 years in at the University...).

It would be a cool performance art piece to take a thousand abandoned slide projectors, fill them with discarded slides and place them in a large, (well powered) dark room and project them continuously on the floors, walls and celling so you could walk around and wonder at what happened to those people...

I think you have the basis of a grant application here... It was 'bricolage' that did it. I was amused when I moved to France and found that it's pretty much a synonym for 'do-it-yourself' (one of the biggest DIY chains is Mr Bricolage) with the implication that it's not very skilled DIY.

Cheers,

R.

Jim Chinn · Mar 24, 2007

I have a collection of hand tinted lantern slides from the 1890s, and some negatives from around 1910. I sometimes look through the piles of old vacation photos at the local thrift stores, usually all from the late 40s through early 60s and pick up something. I also have a few hundred kodachromes from a great uncle that passed away.

I should buy more of the images from the 60s that I find since they make a nice conversation topic with my kids about when I grew up.

pentaxuser · Mar 24, 2007

Bob F. said:
I can't help but think that their choice of stewardesses was somewhat less than perfect in attracting customers...

Cheers, Bob.

Remember the ad: " I'm Mandy. Fly me" There be no such nonsense with these two. Any such attempt could resulting in you flying without the plane after take-off.

Seriously you'd think that there had to be a place on some wall for prints from an era of flying romanticism we'll never see again.

pentaxuser

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