Found

 Out of the recesses of my father’s closet came my most prized ‘found’ object. He’s an executive for a well-known computer company, and I had to admit great surprise at finding such an artistic device as a camera within a closet scattered with old computer parts and ugly ties.

I suppose, for most found objects, one wouldn’t have to request keeping it. In this case, however, I did, and since it turned out he hadn’t used the camera in years, it became mine that week or so before Christmas. 

I can’t say it works perfectly; the light meter inside is broken, so I often expose incorrectly (it’s too early for me to have exposures down by eye). But every click of its shutter is something beautiful and powerful; a device that can capture the world so wonderfully is perhaps the most wonderful of found objects.

It’s the kind of found objects that begets others as one studies the world through the viewfinder. And not just found objects, but found people, places, memories. As Barthes used a photograph to find his mother again, the camera can quietly find so much more than we would expect it to. Perhaps a found camera, despite its slight technological flaws, is one of the most meaningful of cameras. It was found, it finds. We repay each other with every photograph. 

Those artists from the early days of photography, the ones who thought it a far inferior idea of art, don’t make me angry. They make me laugh. Cameras are rarely as objective as they seem; they paint the world in their own shades of color.

And as to finding one, well, it is a great and rare gift.