Found Polaroids is a collection of the best stories from the Found Polaroid Project, a personal archive of over 6,000 orphaned images collected since 2011. The concept behind the project is simple, to breathe new life into long-forgotten images by asking creative minds to write stories about them.
Eerily distant yet warmly familiar, the stories, and the Polaroids that inspired them, have a way of not only transporting us to a different time but also into the intimate lives of complete strangers. By exploring a colourful range of narratives and emotions, these images allow us to glimpse into a fictional, but paradoxically universal, reality that can only be found through storytelling.
More than simply for storytelling, the project has also become a platform to advocate and explore the cultural importance of found and material photography as well as the iconic Polaroid. This is addressed in the book by essays from FP’s founder Kyler Zeleny, as well as Dr. Peter Buse and a preface by Dr. Lisa Jaye Young.