Kyler Zeleny has collected more than 6,000 Polaroids. He couldn’t find who they belonged to so he set out to give them life by asking creative minds to write stories about them.
There is no mistaking the iconic white border and unique square shape of a Polaroid photograph. The gratification we enjoy today of seeing our photos instantly on our smartphones echoes the Polaroid experience of wildly shaking the image as chemicals slowly revealed the photograph before our eyes. Polaroids, most popular in the 1970s and 1980s, changed the way we thought about photography and made it easier than ever to take pictures. Over the last several years, Kyler Zeleny, a Canadian photographer-researcher and author, has collected lost Polaroid photographs. Inspired by his interest in photography and his love for the rich history within his own family photo albums, he started collecting Polaroids around 2011 from thrifts shops, estate sales and eventually on eBay. “What intrigued me about found images, found Polaroids in particular, was the disconnect between the visual evidence that they existed without knowing who these people were, what they have done, who they had wronged, or who they had loved. I was interested in knowing who these people were. I continued to ask myself, ‘who would abandon family photographs?’” Zeleny said.
