Anyone Else Collect "Found" Images?

[MattKing]

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.

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...

Two responses here, both of which originate from my Dad who retired from Canadian Kodak after 36 years of working there.

Quote (as best as I can remember it): "There have been far more great photographs taken with the simplest of box cameras than all the expensive SLRs and professional cameras put together"

(he may have said Instamatics, rather than box cameras).

Story: Every year, Vancouver has a large fair, with agricultural roots, called the Pacific National Exhibition ("PNE"). There used to be lots of buildings, filled with all sorts of commercial and other displays. Kodak would have a large booth every year, filled with people there to help you with your photography. The people in the marketing division (which my father was part of, even though he was lab based) would staff the booth. Dad spent a lot of time in that booth over the years.

One of the features of the booth was that above it they had large screens on which 35mm, 828, 127 and 126 slides were projected. Most of the slides were taken by Kodak employees and they ranged over a wide variety of subjects, although there were certainly lots of photographs that would be considered "snapshots". I know there were a few photos of me projected on those screens over the years (most likely Kodachrome II in 828 format from my Dad's Bantam RF). One famously memorable shot helped prove in my mind that if a young boy gets seasick in a 14 foot fishing boat, Kodachrome reveals that one does, indeed, look green.

In some ways, those projected slide shows might seem banal, but in general, they were very interesting, because there was so much humanity up there (along with a fair share of sunsets, etc.).

Your performance piece might lack the irony that so many performance pieces seem to aspire to - it might be too interesting in it's own right.

Matt

 

[Troy]

Like vernacular photography? Go here. I laugh my butt off every time.

http://bighappyfunhouse.com/

 

[tjaded]

I am someone that buys TONS of old Kodachromes. They are fascinating to me. ..and now that I work at a photo lab I have taken the next step and started getting prints of them (unfortunately digital prints...) They are beginning to take up a lot of space in my place, but I have been thinking about buying a bunch of slide pages and putting them in binders. I've posted a couple of times about the whole copyright aspect of them--not really sure what I want to do with them other than enjoy them. I was approached by someone to use some in a tv show and I did let them use them. Come to think of it, I never did see the show! One thing I did a long time ago that was kind of cool was to take a lot of my favorite Kodachromes, make Polaroids of them (Vivitar slide printer) and then put them together in an old photo album, trying to keep the images in a sort of visual reference chronological order. When someone new comes over and looks at it, I make up stories about the "relatives" in there and see how long I can keep them going--each story getting a bit more absurd than the last. I guess I don't get out enough.

Adios,
Matt

 

[John Curran]

Default Anyone Else Collect "Found" Images?

Some of these images may have historical and archival value as I'm sure the glacier in the last photo has receeded quite a bit by now. Great Find!

 

[Kino]

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.

You bet!

That's hilarious! At University, it was perceived and taught as a very egalitarian, art-speak term!

Thanks! That made my day!

 

[sepiareverb]

Aunt Ethel!!

No, not really- but imagine...

I have a few things, mostly pick up wacky old images, glass plates and negatives. Some strange stuff out there. I've found some great old glass plates, one from maybe 1900 of a girl 5-6 years old with her dolls and dog on the front porch- very nicely posed/arranged but the emulsion went all soft and wavy at some point- like something you'd see in a 70's TV rendition of an acid trip. I also have a box full of glass plate stereo negs from all over the world. The college I worked at got them from some old alum and was tossing them- a few wonderful images in there. I also found a fantastic neg of some guy and a caged weasel.

If you like 'em keep 'em- if not spread them around!

 

[Kino]

Great stories! Glad to see I am not alone in my fascination with found images...

 

[Kino]

IHere'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

Katharine,

Sorry, I missed the link the first reading of your post; cool!

I have to wonder what happened to those two; did they stumble out the door of the studio only to be hit by a bus, or did they die of yellow fever during an epidemic or.. you get the idea.

You know, people rarely look into the camera today with the same intensity; at least I haven't seen it...

 

[Steve Roberts]

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

I don't actively collect such things, but can't resist a peek at any boxes of old photos or slides that turn up in antique sales, flea markets, etc..

About three years ago I bought three albums of old b/w photos for no other reason than they were cheap and some were clearly Dartmoor and local to me. On further investigation, many shots were of a family in the 1920s or 30s and a shot of them on makeshift sledges clearly showed Down Road (known locally as "Millionaires Row") in Tavistock. Having identified the road, I went in search of the large house that appeared in many of the photos - one shot showed its name, but there was nothing of that name in the road. However, a few shots of the house showed that it had very distinctive chimneys and on another visit I found the house and its new name. I didn't go as far as disturbing the occupants, but a look around the rear (it backs on to Tavistock Cricket Club) showed that where there was once a tennis court, there was now another section of garden.

In the subsequent months, the house seemed to change hands, and the new owners set about "modernising" it by, amongst other things, getting rid of the chimneys that were so much a part of the house's character. Coincidentally, at a postcard fair not that long ago, I found a card showing a picture of Tavistock, with a small X over the house and its home address on the writing side.

Clearly, someone had died and their possessions had been spread to the four winds via a house clearance, antique dealers, etc., but the photo albums and postcard hadn't gone that far - I found the former in Plymouth (15 miles away) and the latter in Exeter (45 miles). I have often toyed with the idea of approaching the present owners of the house to see if they would have any interest in what life was like there in the early part of last century, but have not made a move as yet. I suppose I see myself as custodian of someone else's memories!

Steve

 

[Steve Smith]

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...

A friend saw this a couple of years ago: http://www.chortle.co.uk/shows/edin...htenburg_family_slideshow_players:_adventures

Apparently, it was very good.

Steve.

 

[Steve Smith]

More here: Dead Link Removed

Steve.

 

[Kino]

That is great! Thanks for posting that link!

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Kino,

I had mislaid this but Frances just found it for me...

It's the Channel air ferry from the early-to-mid 1950s: I'd love to have gone on it.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Kino]

Dear Kino,

I had mislaid this but Frances just found it for me...

It's the Channel air ferry from the early-to-mid 1950s: I'd love to have gone on it.

Cheers,

R.

Roger,

That's great! The white car reminds me of a Ford Cortina my Uncle imported from England in the 60's. People in the Southwest would double and triple take the car when it was parked, start to walk off and then double back; no doubt because they saw the Ford badge but could NOT understand why they hadn't heard of the car before...