Ransom Riggs has an unusual hobby: he collects old photographs of people he doesn't know. But it's not necessarily about the snapshots themselves — the interesting part is what's written on the backs. Riggs explains:
When you’re looking through bins of thousands of random, unsorted photos, every hundredth one or so will have some writing on it. It’s generally just identifying information (“me and Jerry at the Grand Canyon, 1947″), but every once in a while I'll find a something surprising, emotional, candid, hilarious, heartbreaking -- a few words that bring the picture to life in a profound new way, transforming a blurry black-and-white snapshot of people who seem a million miles and a million years away into an intensely personal sliver of experience that anyone can relate to. It becomes something not just to look at, but to listen to.
The following photos are excerpted from Talking Pictures, which is on sale today.
From the chapter "Clowning Around," which is 100% tomfoolery:
This one's from "Love and Marriage" -- in this case the subject has neither:
This is from "Times of Trouble," which in this case gives us a little insight into what people did to survive during the depression (or maybe he's joking? we'll never know). In case you can't make out the handwriting, it says "Stealing everything I could get my hands on. Ha ha"
And from "Hide This Please," which demonstrates how people have always felt self-conscious about how they look in pictures, since time immemorial.
We love Talking Pictures so much that we're giving away a copy to one lucky Neatoramanaut! Just leave a comment here telling us which picture you like best, and we'll choose a winner by random drawing. Good luck!
Update: Congratulations to commenter Frenchmell, who wins the book!
With the candid quirkiness of Awkward Family Photos and the confessional intimacy of PostSecret, Ransom Riggs's Talking Picturesis a haunting collection of antique found photographs—with evocative inscriptions that bring these lost personal moments to life. Each image in Talking Pictures reveals a singular, frozen moment in a person’s life, be it joyful, quiet, or steeped in sorrow. Yet the book’s unique depth comes from the writing accompanying each photo: as with the caption revealing how one seemingly random snapshot of a dancing couple captured the first dance of their 40-year marriage, each successive inscription shines like a flashbulb illuminating a photograph’s particular context and lighting up our connection to the past.
Ransom Riggs is an LA-based photographer, filmmaker and the author of best-selling illustrated novel, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. We also love his series of photoessays, Strange Geographies, on Mental Floss.
Talking Pictures is available at Amazon and bookstores near you.
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This reminds me so much of Found Magazine!