In 1960s Montreal The Man from the Ministry appeared in many pictures. We saw him only in parts – a leg, an arm a coat just in the frame. In another gallery, we saw found photographs of people looking away from the camera. Picked up at flea markets, from dealers and online, aside from the occasional handwritten name or date stamp, the images came with no information on the subjects or photographers. These accidental mysteries invite us to imagine stories around and between the pictures. Martin Lewis used shadows to pull us into his New York City, a forerunner to Richard Hambleton’s eerie Shadow Man.
Things are no less mysterious in this album. In each we see the shadow of a figure wearing a hat.
Jean-Marie Donat (born in 1962), a collector of vernacular photographs, compiled the pictures in the book Predator. Was the figure a collector, and the last person his subjects ever saw? Is that you Robert Mitchum?
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