Found photography is a genre of photography and/or visual art based on the recovery (and possible exhibition) of lost, unclaimed, or discarded photographs. It is related to vernacular photography

Vernacular photography

Vernacular photography or amateur photography refers to the creation of photographs by amateur or unknown photographers who take everyday life and common things as subjects...

, but differs in the fact that the "presenter" or exhibitor of the photographs did not "shoot" the photograph itself, does not know anything about the photographer, and generally does not know anything about the subject(s) of the photographs. Found photos are generally acquired at flea markets, thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales, or literally just "found" anywhere. The appreciation and interest of the genre is also related to the concept of found art

Found art

The term found art—more commonly found object or readymade—describes art created from undisguised, but often modified, objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function...

 or "readymades"; a concept which was popularized by Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

 and subsequent Dadaists and conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

ists. Much of the appeal of the photos is the mystery regarding the original photographer or the subject matter and can also involve a sort of voyeuristic interest, as if one were obtaining access to a private world. Creating possible narrative

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

s for found photographs has become quite popular, especially on sites which allow viewers to enter their own narratives as comments to the pictures.

Contemporary artists who use found photography as part of their practice include Stephen Bull, Celine Duval, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Alexander Honory, Erik Kessels, Peter Piller and Joachim Schmid

Joachim Schmid

Joachim Schmid studied Visual Communication at and Berlin University of the Arts from 1976 to 1981. He is a Berlin based artist who has worked with found photography since the early 1980s. He began his career as a freelance critic and the publisher of , an iconoclastic and original contribution to...

.

External links

• Found Magazine
• Found Photos A collaborative found photography project
• Junk Shop Photos Unusual, vintage photos discovered in junk shops.
• Museum Of Vernacular Photography Exhibitions Exploring The Depth And Scope Of Vernacular Photography.
• Spillway Categorized Found Photographs and Printed Matter- featuring reader input.
• The Secret Notebooks A Story From Found Photographs
• Vintage Pixels A collaborative database of found vintage photos. Free for use in amateur and commercial projects.
• Foundphotographs.com A Gallery of Inadvertent Art: Found and anonymous photographs from a private collection (largely 19th century and early to mid twentieth century work)