The Lost of Found Photography

Abstract

A loss of meaning ensues as family photographs come into public circulation and display, and the question of how memory endures within this process has become of increasing concern. Retaining photographic materiality, along with original meanings previously associated with images, has been presented as one way of defending against loss. This paper argues that this involves a particular dynamics of object-relating, which is important to consider. What is documented here is how a new cultural treatment of family photographs, within photographic theory and practice, performs a heightened fidelity to the photographic object, which can be challenged on certain grounds. The article takes as its particular focus the artistic adoption of images as “found photography”, where the provenance of the photograph is unknown. Rather than being concerned with defending against the loss of meaning that arises through the public-artistic appropriation of such material, I prefer to see the photograph as a “transitional object” and argue for both a greater recognition of the complexities of the process of appropriation, but also for an unbounded notion of “use”, as a means of releasing the potential of the “found” photograph, as a point of imagining for new realities.

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