The Found Photograph and the Limits of Meaning essay by Barry Mauer
“Found photographs are media artifacts of a peculiar kind because they were never meant to be viewed and interpreted by total strangers. Because the original contexts that anchored their meaning have been severed from them, found photographs foster a new and valuable ‘reading’ disposition, one that sharpens our inferential skills and reflects upon our ordinary habits of perception. The best conclusions we can draw from found photographs are conclusions about ourselves; when we interpret and react to found photographs, we reveal our own perceptual processes.” (4)
found photo finder as “voyeur, detective, Surrealist, and social scientist” (12)