One of my greatest finds as an amateur photo collector is this unassuming 1920s photo album picked up at a Brooklyn flea market. The album's spare 10 pages seem to trace a full, yet, emotionally complex life. But whose life? The album has no names, dates, locations and no apparent chronology. In the end it is an enigma, a generative story machine, with perhaps more to say about the viewer than its phantom subject. I showed the album to some friends and asked them to tell me what they see.

Many thanks to:

Habiba Noor
Katrina Gould
Garth Upshaw
David Cerny

 

david katrina garth habiba