Looking at Lost Photographs is dedicated to the remarkable richness and often striking appeal of photographs from the past. Photographs are among our most personal possessions, yet paradoxically they are also the most easily lost, turning up in junk shops, secondhand stores, and flea markets, with little or no information about the people shown in them, or who made them, or how they got there.
Primarily covering the period from the 1850s to the 1920s and a wide range of locales and photographic genres, author David MacDougall takes us on an engaging tour of 100 of these "lost" photographs. He takes a descriptive and speculative approach modeled after John Szarkovski's 1976 book Looking at Photographs, untangling how each of these images contains a wealth of information about the people, visual culture, and social assumptions of its time. Perceptive and companionable, MacDougall's personal observations breathe life into these pictures and awaken the reader's senses.
A fresh and intimate look into the complexity, richness, and often unexpected beauty of an extraordinary selection of photographs that have been separated from the families that once treasured them, Looking at Lost Photographs is also a book to be dipped into and enjoyed for the sheer pleasure of looking.
