Memories Without Heirs

All of these photos were found at lawn sales, auctions or at the town dump. All of them had been abandoned. Snapshots are everywhere. People have drawers and boxes filled with them. They are carried around in wallets. They are set up in houses as family shrines. They are sent to friends and relatives. At a lawn sale one day, back in the early 70's, I saw a barrel of old photos that had been left out in the rain. I got an impulse to save them, so I bought them all. I found myself moved by the survival of the images, despite the vicissitudes of neglect and rain and time. As I looked at these photos and as I looked at the others that I collected over the intervening years, I became more and more interested in them for myriad reasons. Often it was the ones with mistakes that moved me the most: the shadow of the photographer in the foreground, the picture out of focus, the double exposure, the picture that had been badly treated, rained on, bent, folded etc. These photographs contain a record of the 20th century. They represent an expression of our archetypes; of the ways we see ourselves and of the ways we want to be seen, of our priorities and of the notable events in our lives. With the advent of the snapshot, people’s lives were recorded, not by outsiders, but by themselves. Several years ago I began to have blowups made of some of these images. I had them blown up to 34" x 44". I’ve found that the huge size somehow honored the images. I love seeing them in that large format.