I found this photograph between the pages of a book of poetry in a library and kept it. This was in around spring of 1990. I kept the photograph and noted where I had taken it from. I felt vaguely guilty, as if I were stealing it, although it also seemed as if it had been put there for a reason.
Apparently, that was so that I could be reminded of it over 13 years later by a thread on talk.bizarre, specifically referencing this page.
If you click the photo, it will change into what it looks like after a little Photoshop restoration (auto levels and sharpening). The library was Pattee Library at Penn State. The book was A Century of Roundels by Swinburne, which is to say 100 roundels by Swinburne. It was rather a waste of effort for Swinburne to write 100 of these and the rest is the minor work of a major poet. It is in the public domain and the page links to the entire work. It may have been this very copy, although there are two others at the same library.
I have no idea what the photograph is, but I doubt it was placed between the pages it was without that act having some meaning to someone.
I put this together because I was feeling vaguely jealous of other people's found art and that I never find this kind of thing myself. Then I remembered this and that when I "stole" this photograph, I justified it on the grounds that I would eventually do something with it.
That isn't much, but it at least justifies this post and memorializes the intent of whoever put that photograph into that book for whatever reason.
I could further speculate on this photograph and its meaning and am actually tempted to babble about it at great length, since I have pondered it occasionally over the years, but I am going to restrain myself.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Posted by muldrake at September 27, 2003 04:22 AM
| TrackBack