I had stumbled across a 24 exposure roll of film, which was contained within the body of a non operational camera. The roll had been shot but not removed. I immediately developed the roll and was surprisingly moved by what I now had in my posession. The photographs, although bland in a sense, had a total and utter importance and beauty involved with them. They were a glimpse into someone's life, a little platform into how they viewed the world. There was a compositional excellence that I'm not sure was accidental or not. All I knew was that this set of pictures with the context of their meaning were an indisputable body of photographic work and that I could not just sit on them. They must be seen. I set about creating a little home-made zine in which each photo would be given a full bleed spread to show of entirely the level of excellence. It had a centre booklet which explained the context of the images and how they came about. I felt this had to be a separate element so as not to take away from the actual images themselves and this seemed like a nice way of including text yet keeping it separated.
Once i had designed the book I looked at what I had created and actually regretted what I had done. These photos weren't mine and the more I stared at them the more this feeling was reinforced. It felt selfish to gain from anothers images, ones they had taken for a reason and had never actually seen themselves. I felt pretty saddened by it. I knew that I had to try and track the photographer down somehow and try returning the pictures to the owner. The zine now had a purpose. It was a vehicle for contacting the owner in the medium of something I could physically send out and give to people in order to gather information. I am in the process of creating a lot more copies. These will be sent to any leads I can find. I am currently researching & contacting the UK hovercraft association which the majority of these pictures were taken at. From there I will continue to follow any leads and send out more copies until he original owner has been located. All the instructions are held within the object so there is no supporting material or explanation needed. Technically, if I had the funds I would just start leaving them around the place to be picked up. This surely is the ultimate gift to someone as it is so personal in the for of a long lost memory of theirs, and the packaging its contained in is its own entity.
