Photos that you might have found down the back of your sofa are now big business!
In 2005, the American artist Richard Prince’s photograph of a photograph, Untitled （Cowboy）, was sold for $ 1, 248, 000.
Prince is certainly not the only contemporary artist to have worked with so-called “found photographs”—a loose term given to everything from discarded（丢弃的） prints discovered in a junk shop to old advertisements or amateur photographs from a stranger’s family album. The German artist Joachim Schmid, who believes “basically everything is worth looking at”, has gathered discarded photographs, postcards and newspaper images since 1982. In his on-going project, Archiv, he groups photographs of family life according to themes: people with dogs; teams; new cars; dinner with the family; and so on.
Like Schmid, the editors of several self-published art magazines also champion （捍卫） found photographs. One of them, called simply Found, was born one snowy night in Chicago, when Davy Rothbard returned to his car to find under his wiper（雨刷） an angry note intended for some else: “Why’s your car HERE at HER place?” The note became the starting point for Rothbard’s addictive publication, which features found photographs sent in by readers, such a poster discovered in our drawer.
The whole found-photograph phenomenon has raised some questions. Perhaps one of the most difficult is: can these images really be considered as art? And if so, whose art? Yet found photographs produced by artists, such Richard Prince, may riding his horse hurriedly to meet someone? Or how did Prince create this photograph? It’s anyone’s guess. In addition, as we imagine the back-story to the people in the found photographs artists, like Schmid, have collated （整理）, we also turn toward our own photographic albums. Why is memory so important to us? Why do we all seek to freeze in time the faces of our children, our parents, our lovers, and ourselves? Will they mean anything to anyone after we’ve gone?

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可能会在你沙发靠背下面发现的照片现如今成了一种大的营生！
2005年，一张美国画家理查德.普林斯的照片，无标题（牛仔），卖了1,248,000美元。
普林斯肯定不是当代唯一的、与所谓的“发现照片”营生中有用的艺术家。《发现照片》是一条释义不那么严格的词，表达的是从在旧货商店里发现的被丢弃的印刷品到陌生人家里老的广告和相册里业余爱好者的摄影等等。德国画家J.斯密德（他相信“一切东西都有它值得看的地方”）自1982年以来一直在收集被丢弃的照片、明信片以及报纸上的图片。在他一直在继续的项目——《档案》里，他将照片按主题分组：与狗在一起的人，团队，新车，与家人共进晚餐，等等。
象斯密德一样，几家自己出版的艺术杂志的编辑也在捍卫《发现照片》的活动。其中的一家简称《寻找》的杂志，其诞生在芝加哥的一个雪夜，当时大卫.罗斯巴德回到自己的车前，发现雨刷下压着一张便条，话中有话的写道：“为什么你的车在此处她的位置上？”，此便条是罗斯巴德对印刷出版上瘾的起点，他的出版物的特点是在由读者寄来的照片中发现价值，而这些寄来的东西也可能就是我们抽屉里的一张招贴画。
整个《发现照片》现象也引起了一些问题，其中最难的问题是：这些图片真的有艺术价值吗？如果有，又是谁的艺术？已经发现的，由艺术家摄制的照片，如理查德.普林斯，照片上的他可能是骑着马匆匆去会某个人？或者普林斯是怎样创作这副照片的？可能是听了什么人的建议？除此之外，在我们想象由象斯密德这样的人整理的《发现照片》中的人物背后的故事时，我们还会转过来看看我们自己的相册。为什么记忆对我们是如此的重要？为什么我们都寻求让我们孩子、我们的父母、我们的爱人以及我们自己的脸庞在时间上凝固？在我们已经离去后对任何人有任何意义吗？

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