FOUND

FOUND brings together photographs and fragments encountered outside the lives they once belonged to: undeveloped rolls of film, pictures lost or discarded in the street, family albums donated with their photographs still inside. A briefcase hidden in an old architecture firm, discovered during renovations, held slides and love notes. A photobooth portrait marked a page in a donated book. A message was etched into a Super 8 motel pad. Each discovery offers evidence of someone’s presence, but little explanation of what happened afterward.

The uncertainty is part of the work. Were these things deliberately abandoned, or accidentally left behind? Was the photograph a treasured bookmark, forgotten when the book changed hands? Who are the people pictured, and where are they now? Developing an exposed roll makes its images visible, but does not necessarily bring their stories any closer. Faces and places emerge while the circumstances surrounding them remain out of reach.

Some images are joyful; others feel haunting, strange, or unsettling. Without their original context, even an ordinary moment can become difficult to read. The photographs invite speculation, but resist any account that would make them fully knowable. FOUND stays with that unresolved distance between encountering a trace of someone’s life and knowing the person who left it. What survives is neither a complete story nor an empty object, but something intimate whose meaning can no longer be taken for granted.