Found Photo - Alaska Brown Bear

I got this at the flea market on Sunday. The back has the f-stop and shutter speed listed as well as the date (4/15/46) and the title or caption, "Alaska Brown Bear".

Found Photo of the Day

I sanded this photo down several years ago and found it today in a pile of other small photos. It has an interesting canvas-like texture to it - the back says "April 1974".

Found Friday

This photo was my great find at the flea market this last Sunday. It's a big print too - approximately 9x12". It was in with a lot of other photos of this kid and his family in Germany during WWII or shortly after the war. This shot was the best of the bunch.

Found Photos; Saturday Edition

I found these three photos among others at the flea market yesterday. As I've mentioned before, I've been collecting old photos since the 10th grade - at first I collected with the intention of using them in artwork but now I just collect them. These three were part of a pile of photos of one family's vacation to Europe and North Africa/Egypt. There were a lot of interesting photos, but these three were definitely some of the standouts.

ps - If you haven't read through Mindy's guest post yet - you really should (see below).

Found Photo - On the Plains

I haven't posted any vintage/antique photos in a while, so here's one from my collection.
The back says,

"Now laugh. Tee hee! Ha! Ha! Those are Mountains yu see 15 miles away."

New Found Photos

Those of you who have known me for a while or have read this blog for a while know that I've been collecting found photos for years. In fact it's probably been over 12 years now. I have amassed quite a collection. I've dug through thousands of antique and vintage photos, so I can say with some degree of experience that it is a rare thing to find a formally exceptional photographer or photograph. Most of the images I end up buying are unique in their subject or location but more often than not they are amateur in their technical or compositional approach. Well, today I got a great deal on a exceptional bag of 8x10" black and white photos. The guy I bought them from said they were taken by Lee Sullivan and he got them at an estate sale, but I couldn't find information on Sullivan online. Take a look at these - they're fantastic. There are numerous copies of most these photos in the bag- most with different exposures. I tried to scan the best ones, but there are a lot of great ones. For higher res images go here.

Found Photo

I picked this up at the flea market yesterday.

Shot to the Heart

Happy Valentines Day! (image from the collection of Nathan Abels)

Found Photo of the Day

I always thought this was a poignant image.
(from the collection of Nathan Abels)

Found Friday

This is my favorite found photo for the holidays. I got this a few years ago and I've used it on Christmas cards, mix cd covers, etc. Classic in my book.

Found Photo of the Day

(front)

(back)

This is a photo that my Mom found and has since become one of her favorites. It reads, "We are all Here But Joe and He is under the table. From Clark Oliver."

Found Friday: A Ship

While in Silverton, CO last week, we stopped by one of the better antique shops we've been in. We got seduced by the charm of this hand-made folk art ship. I love the wobbly lines, the color combination, the somewhat clumsy paint job and the overall uniqueness of this. Great find indeed (that's our new table and chairs too):

Found Photos of the Day

I went to the flea market this morning and it was very hot - but I did get a photo album with these photos in it (among many others). Click for hi-res versions:

(very Colorado)

Check out his Snow White Tie

More Photobooths

Here are a few more photo-booth photos from my collection to accompany the ones I posted last week.

Photobooths

At the aforementioned estate sale I also picked up a few new photo-booth images (first four in first row pictured here). I've scanned a sampling of my collection of photo-booth images for your enjoyment:

this is one of my favorites:If you like these, check out a book by Babbette Hines called "Photobooth"

New Finds

I picked up a couple of nice etchings at an estate sale Friday - they have exceptional line work:

Found Friday - Found Recordings

A couple of years ago, I stumbled on a trove of home recordings at a thrift store in Fort Wayne, Indiana which I quickly bought up for a dime a piece. Not too long ago I started trying to record them to mp3. Most of them were badly damaged and I was unable to record form the majority of them. There were a few that came out well, and a few more that came out ok. I've compiled the decent ones (the last two tracks are pretty poor quality) for you to listen to. It is a fascinating collection of short audio letters, talk about the war (WWII), home recordings of the piano and accordian, recordings from the radio, etc. All the information I have on these is that the main two people on the 1945 recordings are M. M. White and Helen. Some of the records have scrawled notes, my favorites being the black markered ones on which they wrote "bad." There were no second takes - so there's a good live, conversational feel to these recordings. I have tagged the mp3s so it should come up as one album on your mp3 player. The audio quality is very rough- covered in a thick layer of fuzz, but sometimes that's refreshing with the over-polished state of most new recordings. Here are some scans of some of the records - some were on a vinyl-coated cardboard disc, some were on vinyl (the ones that sounded better), some were on vinyl-coated aluminum (most of which had peeled off the metal). You can find the collection here, here or here. I especially like the track "Married Life for Us".

This is what most of the look like - on vinyl-coated cardboard

Found

Here's the enthusiastically scribbled inside cover of a vintage grammar school book I found years ago. I think Cy Twombly would be a fan of the "Arf Arf Boys."

Cy Twombly
Apollo, 1975
Oil stick and graphite on paper
59 1/16 x 53 15/16 in (150 x 134 cm)
Photo from the Gagosian Gallery

Found Friday

From an old photo I picked up years ago - I cut out the background in photoshop at the time, with the intention of using it in some art but it never came to pass. I like the photo like this though.

Found Art

I picked up this "Madame X" book a couple of weeks ago because of its state of disrepair.