Found Negatives is a project that explores the fragmented, dissonant nature of communication by pairing anonymous social media comments with medium-format photographic negatives collected from forgotten archives. The work creates a disorienting juxtaposition: the nostalgic warmth of old photographs colliding with the often harsh, unfiltered language of the internet. In doing so, the project investigates the shifting nature of human expression and connection.

The images are from a personal collection of found negatives gathered over years of searching through estate sales, antique shops, and flea markets. These photographs, once intended as cherished keepsakes, are now stripped of their original context. The people, places, and stories they once represented have faded into anonymity. Against this visual backdrop, the accompanying text was gathered by a custom-built web crawler that collected comments from social media platforms and video-sharing sites. These comments reflect the raw, often unfiltered interactions in the digital public sphere.

Viewers should be aware that some of the text, just like much of the internet, contains explicit language and potentially triggering content.

• Found Negatives pairs anonymous images with anonymous voices to explore how context shapes meaning.
• Social media softens harsh language through context, making it less jarring in its native space.
• Removed from that digital environment, these words become stark and unsettling.
• The loss of context reveals the fragility of meaning and our instinct to find narrative.
• The project invites reflection on how missing context can expose hidden, uncomfortable truths.

The two square images above represent a website specific mockup of how this series is meant to be displayed. These will cycle through the various images and text samples from the project. For exhibition, the images are printed and displayed in pairs, with one image and one text selection.