As the leading online portfolio website platform for photographers, Format is interested in how people use the internet to store and share images. (Just look at all the great examples of portfolio websites here!) But Format Magazine editor Jill Blackmore Evans took it one step further. She started investigating the history of found photography, and her research led her down a path about loss, rather than discovery.
Lost Images is the cumulation of her research and an entire website dedicated to the disappearing act of candid photography from the late 1990s to early 2000s. Using one of Format’s newest templates, Evans combines personal experiences with exclusive interviews and academic discourse on the subject of archiving internet media.
She draws connections between gaps in her own life, and the rise of digital photography. Sorting through Internet History, an archival project by Douglas Batten, she writes that she does “a double take” at a photo of teenagers in a limo. “I genuinely thought it was a photo of a birthday party I’d attended in high school,” she writes. “On closer inspection, it was not that party. The people in the photo were strangers.”
In addition to Internet History, Lost Images features anecdotes from the creators of Craigslist Mirrors and Suns from Sunsets on Flickr. There are nine galleries of strange, yet familiar found photography to explore. Maybe you’ll see yourself, or someone who looks just like you.
Click here to launch lostimages.format.com
Lost Images is the first instalment of Format Magazine’s new Themes on Themes series. We’ll be using Format’s portfolio themes as the platform to discuss a theme relevant to our community of creative professionals. Do you have an idea? Email us at magazine@format.com.
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