Accidental Mysteries

A friend first clued me into the work of artists/art collectors John and Teenuh Foster, and I've been meaning to reblog it. John and Teenuh tour the garage sales of the US and pick up photographs and other objects that seem to tell stories: but enigmatic stories, mysteries in fact. It sounds as if it could easily be a patronising connoisseurship of folk kitsch, but their aims are nothing like that. As their website and online gallery puts it: "They consider vernacular photography to be a long overlooked genre of folk art, capturing elements of history, sociology, psychology and often “accidental” moments on film."

The photographs they use have been abandoned by their owners and inheritors for reasons we don't know. It's perhaps the photographs' imperfections which make them seem to summon up their lost time so vividly. This isn't the past arrayed in its Sunday best, posing for posterity, but the hidden, quietly strange corners of America past. Looking through them, I was often reminded of David Lynch - but his more subtle, lyrical moments, like the openings of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet.


I've used this photograph collection now to teach the uncanny, the narrative and lyric in photography, and art as selection.