About Lost Images
Lost Images explores the difficulty—and importance—of archiving photography on the internet, through a discussion of three online image archives and interviews with their creators.
In Internet History, Douglas Batten has amassed what might be the most extensive online collection of photographs of America in the early 2000s simply by browsing through old photo hosting websites. Created by the artist Eric Oglander, Craigslist Mirrors is a compilation of oddly beautiful photos of mirrors for sale on Craigslist. (You can find more of Oglander's work at his Format portfolio.) Lastly, the artist Penelope Umbrico uses images predominantly from websites like Craigslist and Flickr to create archives of anonymous portraits which raise questions about online identity and authorship.
About the author
Lost Images was written and designed by Jill Blackmore Evans, who is a Toronto-based writer and editor at Format Magazine. Jill has previously written about archiving and art for Format Magazine, discussing Shu Lea Cheang's Brandon and the work of Sarah Meyohas. Her writing on art and digital media has also appeared in Vice, Exberliner, and Crack, among other places.
About the site
This is the first instalment of Format Magazine's Themes on Themes, which uses Format portfolio themes to explore themes that are relevant to our creative community. Lost Images was built using the Format theme Coral, which will soon be available for download.
About Format
Format makes it easy to build a professional portfolio website, without learning to code. Creative professionals in over 190 countries use Format sites to showcase their work. Format's themes aren't just for online portfolios, though. A Format site can be a store, a magazine, a photo diary, an essay, or anything else you can think of. Find out more here.
The Kodak Videk Megaplus, the first megapixel camera, circa 1986.