Photo Trouvee

A Unique Collection of 285 Amateur Photographs; Compiled by Michel Frizot and Cédric de Veigy.

In the hands of amateur photographers, the camera is unpredictable; it captures the things we wish to preserve, but not always intended. . . . Perhaps we recognize our own feelings in other people’s gestures, our own troubles in their turmoil, and our own small pleasures in their private moments. Michel Frizot & Cédric de Veigy

More than a billion new photographs are taken every week. A child’s first hesitant steps, a sunny summer day at the beach, a couple’s embrace, a family dinner–all intimate and universal aspects of everyday life which resonate emotionally with every individual. Photographs capture and freeze these moments. Collected and viewed together a photo album of the world is produced.

PHOTO TROUVÉE is a unique collection of 285 amateur photographs found, collected, and edited by the eminent French photohistorian Michel Frizot and the photographic researcher Cédric de Veigy. Gathered and discovered at flea markets and antique shops over a 20 year period, these photographs of everyday life from the past and the present, with subjects that are immediately familiar, conjure up familiar images and emotions. Frizot and Veigy’s aim in this collection was, …to give these images back to everyone who has taken a photo and would love to take a longer look at it.

These photographs once belonged to hundreds of now anonymous men and women, both young and old, poor and rich, suburbanite and urbanite, capture social events and individual portraits, natural and urban landscapes, still lifes and everyday objects. Above all, they reveal moments and situations, which only photography can freeze and make visible.

Viewed in one album, the photographs form what the authors call `an anthropology of the ordinary’. The images have been selected as much for their atmosphere and universal feelings of humanity as for their intrinsic quality as photographs, often provoking more questions than they answer.

With the tremendous growth of the influence of `amateur’ photography within professional photographic circles, provoking the interest of such figures as Martin Parr, this beautiful object and its exceptional picture editing will catch the attention of picture editors, researchers, and all photography enthusiasts.