polaroids

The project consists of vintage photographs that I buy on eBay. Most of the pictures were taken in the 1980s-1990s on a polaroid camera. Some of them were taken on 35mm cameras or on an instant Kodak.
I started this project when I was writing a fiction novel. I was looking for people who resembled my characters. I thought that I would stop collecting portraits of strangers after finishing the novel, but it's been 3 years since then, and I'm still pleased with this idea. I look for people whom I don't know and who resemble people who have never existed. But the project has become even more than this. I see it as cultural preservation of the end of the 20th century.
I love the fact that those photos were only snapshots. These pictures are intimate, it's like peeping at other people's lives. It's as odd as it is fascinating. Rarely I buy street view photos, too.

Some photos make a perfect match with each other. It's always exciting to find a matching portrait a year after the first one was bought. It resembles the memory game, and I believe this project is about the generation memory.
The pictures of wrecked cars don't really fit into this series, but they are atmospheric, rare to find, and I don't have intentions to separate them into a different project.
The project design has changed several times during these 3 years, but in the end I decided that the best design for it was no design. It doesn't need any additional texts or images. The project is interesting enough as it is.
It's puzzling me how those pictures got on eBay. Why they were considered unimportant for family albums and were suggested to be sold.