The rebelling orphan: adopting the found photograph

Abstract

Every day thousands of family photographs get abandoned in second hand bookshops, at flea markets, and internet auctions, losing their past and having their stories erased. Conversely, the same images get found, reappropriated, and assigned with new meanings. It is this process of giving the found photograph a new lease of life that I explore in this article. As I argue here, photographs continue to act as potent narrative tools even if we no longer have access to their subjects or producers. Not only do I show how anonymous photographs can be read and interpreted but also how they function as material objects that are collected, loved, treasured, and inevitably integrated into the lives of their new adopted families. I show, in particular, how both the content and the materiality of photographs makes them carriers of family history and private memory, as well as intersecting with other categories such as class and identity.

Keywords:

• Found photographs
• family objects
• personal memory
• working class
• Poland

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank John Paul Newman and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Your suggestions, praise, and encouragement were very much appreciated and gratefully received. Thank you.

Notes

1. All translations from Polish are mine.