Stories

Collecting vernacular photographs is like a treasure hunt: it’s about the search, the discovery.

It’s also about piecing clues together, researching and recalling history. It’s about reviving souvenirs, documenting life. Sometimes a message written on the back of a photograph will give a clue, a date, a name. Most of the time, we are left to imagine what there was.

Poetic, profoundly human, both singular and universal, vernacular photographs are also cultural and social testimonies. They invite us to reflect on history as we know it and as seen from the perspective of their photographer.

As we tell try to retell their stories, drawing the contours of eras long gone, we are reminded of their fundamental value, to produce and document memory.