Those of you who have been paying attention (both of you) will recall my constant wailing about the Real Photo Postcards (rppcs) and found photos which leave us mystified because no one, back in the day, bothered to write anything on the back. Details which might have fleshed out the story of the places and people on the picture simply do not exist, and cannot, after all these years, be salvaged. It is frustrating, and yet…. Do we prefer the couple above as they are, leaving us to make up our own story about the McDonnans and the mysterious disappearances of Walpurgisnacht 1909? Or would we like to know that this was Frank and Stella, who ran the first schoolhouse in Cornsilk, South Dakota?
A recent collection of Found photography, as it is popularly known (the pros prefer “Vernacular Photography”, shots taken by people with cameras as opposed to artists who used their equipment to express a vision) has led me to reconsider the whole question. The shot above is the work of what I call a photographoyeur, a sort of filmic peeping tom whose camera was always ready to catch someone bending over too far. There is nothing on the backside (of the photo) to tell us much and yet, accidentally or on purpose, this picture is identifiable within a few years as to date and can be pinpointed as to place. It turns out that the Thriller Speedboat Tours still go on around Miami Beach. They currently employ boats dubbed 06 Thriller and 08 Thriller. The presence of their 01 speedboat puts this somewhere between 2007 and 2011 or thereabouts. It might be NICE to know who the model was, since she was clearly an ametur (what swimsuit model actually steps into the water?) but we can’t have everything.
THIS photo, on the other hand, IS labelled, to a certain degree. We at least have a date, so we know SOMETHING about the photograph.
The label, however, tells us a whole lot more about the photographoyeur involved. As it stands, we don’t even know for sure if the model ever knew she’d been photographed.
Labels, it seems, give us only what the labeler thought was important at the time, leaving us with certain frustrations which are unlikely to be resolved. Thanks to the person who labeled the three photos in this set, we know the names and date of the Halloween party.
But oh, if only they had included last names, it might be possible to do more research into what is the most burning question presented: What the heckfire was Jerry Supposed to BE? Is he a cat? A Big Bad Wolf? A tumbleweed? The world may never know.
This pre-party picture is unlabeled, presenting the usual questions: who is this showing off her party dress, and what was the occasion? We can see a few decorations, and maybe those plastic tubs contain more. But we do get one hint in a second photo.
A decoration and/or early guest is waving at us from the left. THIS gives us a terminus ad quem, a date beyond which speculation cannot go. Dora the Explorer’s presence makes this a twenty0first century photo, as Dora did not debut until late Fall of 2000. Not much but, as always, Dora helps out.
The person who assembled this collection was a connoisseur of photogravoyeur photography, which includes a few even trickier problems. There are no fewer than four bathing suit photographs with full names and dates. But they leave out the most important data for those of us who pick up found photography for resale. See, these were pre-liposuction photos. What I need to know before offering these for sale is whether the models have relatives who are going to drop by with baseball bats if I show the pix online. I still insist on the basic principle that labels make things a little easier, in spite of pictures like this last one, which is labeled “Jackie clowning. Single, huh?” There are so many things I’d like to…but maybe one of Jackie’s friends still exists to explain. We can always hope.
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