The Anonymous Project by Lee Shulman

By chance, in the autumn of 2016, award-winning film director, Lee Shulman bought a box of vintage slides from the United States on a “nostalgic whim.” Although he had always nursed an amateur interest in slide photography, Shulman was “blown away” upon discovering the incredible quality and intimacy of these Kodachrome slides. “It was like discovering unique little windows into our past,” says the collector. Struck by the outstanding character and condition of the slides, he brought in his friend and publisher Emmanuelle Harkin, and The Anonymous Project—one of the most important collections of amateur slides in the world, now collected in a photo book by Taschen— was born. For Shulman, the aim was to “save this lost collective memory”.

In the era of Photoshop, airbrushing and Instagram filters, amateur film photographs flicker with a charming candidness, the antithesis of what we’re used to seeing today. “No cropping, no manipulation, no printing or postproduction,” says Shulman. “What you see is what you get —unadulterated perfection at its best.” But while the images may be more truthful than their glossy, stylised present-day counterparts, for Shulman, slide photography was an early example of social media by inviting friends and family over to watch images projected onto a screen.”I often find exactly the same type of images that we see on Instagram, so in this respect not much has changed,” he explains. “We even have examples of selfies where people used time-release shutters to capture a moment.”

Curating a selection of 300 images from a collection of 175,000 was no simple task. Shulman says he was led by “personal choice” and an intuitive feeling. “I prefer images that capture an intimate family moment, ones to which I feel an emotional connection to,” he muses. “For me the magic of amateur photography is the relationship between the photographer and the subject… these images are often charged with an emotional bond that we don’t always find in professional photography.” And although this type of photography belongs to a specific middle-class society,  the images show that “family was and still remains the defining feature of human existence.” Certain social and political barriers may have shifted, but “we still continue to share the same goals and aspirations for ourselves and our loved ones.”

While the people and places depicted in these pictures may be unknown, they are surprising in their familiarity—beach holidays and Sunday drives, haircuts and hangouts, family get-togethers, lovers embracing. Overall, they suggest the essential human desire to archive and document fleeting moments of joy and happiness. “I hope that people will look past the vintage nature of the images and reflect on their personal and emotional content,” says Shulman. “By preserving this important part of our shared experience, we learn about each other and our differences, and, more important and to a much greater degree, we learn about our shared humanity.”

Midcentury Memories: The Anonymous Project by Lee Shulman (hardcover, 280 pages, €40) is out now from Taschen.

The lost picture archive capturing the magic of amateur film photography. By Hannah Hummel. Sleek Mag, October 31, 2019.

When Lee Shulman impulsively a bought a box vintage slides a couples years ago, he had no idea it would spark such an obsession in him. Opening the box and holding every single slide up to the light, he discovered so many of them to be a poignant and artfully framed vignette into the life of an anonymous person. “I have always had a fascination for slide photography and as a filmmaker I have always loved the projected image,” Lee says. “But I was just blown away by these intimate moments of life frozen in time. I found them charged with emotion.”

What started as a hobby, sifting through more and more boxes, grew to became a full-time undertaking. The result is The Anonymous Project: a catalogue of the best images Lee and Emmanuelle Halkin have gathered from all over the world. With so many of them taken in the 1950s -- a golden age of amateur photography when cameras became cheaper and readily available -- finding their owners is not their aim. Instead, Lee wants to create an archive of images that feels personal despite its subject anonymity, and ties us to a generation before us in ways we might not have imaged. “It’s a daily labour of love,” he adds. “We have viewed over 800,000 slides so far and it is a monumental task on some levels, but, as long as the pleasure is there, the workload is not a problem. At the beginning I was just buying the boxes online, but as the collection grew rapidly it wasn’t long before we had people just sending over their finds. We receive boxes of slides on a weekly basis now.”

So much work goes into sourcing and cataloguing the images. What is it that you gain from archiving these images on a personal level?

Every image that goes into the collection is a purely personal choice. This is what makes the project unique. In each image that I view, if I feel an emotional connection it becomes part of the collection. This is definitely the most gratifying part of the work. All these slides are complete unique one-offs, like miniature works of art, each with its own intimate story attached. There is a sense of mystery around who these people where and what their lives must of been like that I find intriguing. As a film director I find new ways of associating these images together to create new stories. This is a storytelling project in essence.

Do you think there a particular quality to these images that resonates with you most?

Technically there is an incredible quality and colour to these images that seems so modern and fresh even though they are often over 60 years old. I love the depth of the images, there is an almost 3D quality to the images when you hold them up to the light. I love the cinematic quality of slides, the idea of a home cinema style projection is something so unique. For me I love the imperfections of amateur photography that make it so honest and intimate. This is life unadulterated.

What's the criteria when deciding which images you'll publish online?

Well it’s a totally subjective. I Iike to publish at least one or two of our daily finds on Instagram. Once again it’s a totally emotional decision… it’s how I feel at that very moment and if the image speaks to me.

In terms of how the images are framed, does it feel like people's relationship with the camera has changed over the last 50 years?

At the time there was no re-cropping or filter or enhancements. This was a very raw process.

Imagine that, firstly, you had to have a pretty decent set-up. Taking an image was a complicated process as framing and exposure was never an exact art. Once the image was taken, the film would be sent off and you would receive the slides a month later where you would need a slide projector to see the final image! It’s was a real leap of faith unlike today.

Often you invited the family and close friends to watch and share an evening home projection of your slides. In this respect they were the first form of social media. I often feel there is a great similarity between these two worlds.

Specifically what is The House, your new exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles photography festival, looking to explore?

I was particularly interested in the idea of what makes a house a home. This question is at the core of the exhibition and through the images and curation of them I have tried to explore this notion. Often the house is where we feel most secure. It’s where we can let our hair down and just be ourselves away from the constraints of social graces and codes. These images capture very intimate family moments, they are a collective memory that belong to us all. I believe we can all find a little bit of ourselves in all these images.

In an era of total photographic online emersion, what do you think these images teach us about the past?

Well I think we can learn an enormous amount about ourselves. We can often find similarities between these images and images we take today. I often look at the images I take of my own family and see so many instances that are almost identical in these types of images. I believe that we all have the same aspirations and hopes for ourselves and our loved one. Codes may have changed but in the end we all strive for the same goals. It’s quite comforting on a humanist level. Different but the same is the way I see it.

Is there an image or set that means the most to you?

That’s a hard one. I love so many of these images for so many different reasons. There is a set of images from the 1950s that we received that I call “the lover’s box”. The box itself is a thing of beauty. Leather bound and very chic. Inside it recounts the story of a young couple very much in love. It’s strange as the images feature almost entirely the couple in very intimate close-up moments of life. I soon realised that they had used a timer to capture themselves together, almost like a vintage selfie. This is an incredible love story. I often wonder who they were.

This archive of vintage photographs show us how little we’ve all changed.  By Ryan White.

i-D , August 1, 2019. 

Founded in 2017, the project has already rescued 700,000 colour slides, which tell the story ‘of all our lives’

When filmmaker Lee Shulman bought a box of vintage slides from Ebay, he was hoping for some blurry snaps to flick through on a Sunday afternoon, and maybe a picture or two to keep. But when they arrived, ‘I nearly fell off my seat.’  What he saw amazed him: here were hundreds of snapshots of strangers’ lives. The poses were instantly recognisable: children grinning over birthday cakes, couples squinting on the beach – the simple magic of unstaged life, captured in rich Kodachrome colour.

The price of colour photography plummeted in the early Fifties, allowing people to snap away with newfound freedom. But the chemicals that produce the slides fade over time. If the photos were to disappear, then with them so would the memories of our collective human experience – and Shulman didn’t want to let that happen.

With the help of a friend, photo publisher Emmanuelle Halkin, Shulman created The Anonymous Project. A Paris-based nonprofit, its aim is ambitious: to collect, scan and catalogue all colour slides produced since the Fifties. Since starting the project in January 2017, Shulman and Halkin have collected over 700,000 slides, many of them mysteriously donated. The best ones make it onto their website. Scroll through it and you’ll see unknown faces in familiar scenes. Laughter, love, boredom – it’s all captured here.

We spoke to Shulman in light of Portrait of Humanity, an initiative seeking to prove that there’s more that unites us than sets us apart. The Anonymous Project’s mission reflects our own: to document, celebrate and share the universal experience of humanity.

How has the project evolved?

At first, I was collecting the slides purely because nobody seemed to want them. Quickly, the project evolved into something much more artistic. I realized very early on that there were many recurring themes – both physical and emotional – within the images I saw.

The idea of preserving and exploring this collective memory became a sort of obsession. The images made me think very much about our shared experiences and humanity; I believe that we all share the same goals and hopes in life, and these images are a testament to that.

How do you choose which pictures make the final cut?

The project is very organic, so it often takes us in surprising directions. In artistic projects, the artist is usually in charge, but with this, the images take the lead.

When deciding which pictures enter the collection, the criteria is purely personal. There’s a feeling, an attachment, a sense of a story that intrigues me. For me, these images are all about storytelling. Creating new ways of imagining the way we see ourselves in the world.

What are the main themes that you’ve noticed running through? What do people have in common?

There are so many themes that we have designated categories on our website, ranging from families standing in front of their houses or by their cars to holidays and road trips. We also have more abstract themes – there’s one we’ve called ‘Sweet Dreams’, which is people photographed while sleeping. We love this one. The subjects don’t know they have been immortalized. We also have ‘Together’ which is a simple but emotionally-charged theme that centres on relationships, both romantic and platonic.

‘Different but the same’ is how we see ourselves.  It may sound a bit cheesy, we have so much more in common that we would ever like to admit. You can’t imagine how many photos we have of people just looking at themselves in mirrors. It’s a real reflection of life.

What has the project taught you about humanity?

Well, this is the best part. We live in a world that is considered so fractured and full of division, especially at this moment in time, and yet what I see on a daily basis is totally the opposite. Intimate moments of joy, conciliation, fun, shared moments of conviviality.

I feel that we share so much more than what separates us. These images show us that we all strive for the same goals in life. We all have the same hopes and aspirations for ourselves and our families. What I see here is one big family. They are my family, your family… these are the stories of all our lives.

What are the most moving collections that you’ve come across?

We recently received a lot from a gentleman in the USA with a very moving letter. The letter told us that he had found a large stock of slides in his recently deceased neighbour’s attic. The letter described in detail the life of this wonderful person and his background. They described him and his wife in detail with many of his physical attributes, his husky smokers voice, his wicked sense of humour and his obsessional love of country music and dance. It gave the images a really emotional edge. We felt like we knew this person. We named the box ‘Elmer’s box’, after him. Not so anonymous, this one.

Will the project ever be over?

Our aim is to share this amazing collection in the form of exhibitions and publications. We are constantly finding new ways of telling these incredible life stories. Everyday brings new challenges and new ideas. In my mind, we have just started and I hope we will continue to find new and exciting ways to explore this collective memory. This is a constant discussion between our images and the public. This I feel has no end.

Portrait of Humanity: The Anonymous Project is restoring our collective memory, one colour slide at a time. British Journal of Photography. By Beth Ryan. British Journal of Photography , December  21, 2018. 

Though it is almost impossible to pick even a few favorites out of the more than half a million photographic slides owned by The Anonymous Project, founder Lee Shulman can think of a couple off the top of his head. One is a picture of a couple on roller skates in 1984, likely in California. The woman, in an all-red aerobics outfit – crop top and all – even has red wrist guards. The man with her is wearing blue and white knee socks with short shorts and a pink headband. All in all, a pretty goofy picture.

'I don't know why,' Shulman tells DailyMail.com. 'It's not the prettiest picture and they're not the most beautiful people in the world, but they look like they're having the best time in the world. And it's their Sunday and it's total freedom and it's great. I love that photo. And I think that's one of the photos I loved the most.'

The Paris-based nonprofit, which was started just more than a year ago, is working on collecting and preserving photographic slides – which are positive images on a transparent base, meant to be shown using a slide projector – and the 'collective memory' that goes along with them. The Anonymous Project is run by Shulman and his friend Emmanuelle Halkin and has curated a collection out of the more than 500,000 images they have bought or received in the past year. The images in the collection – which today includes an estimated seven or 8,000, according to Shulman – are chosen for the narratives they tell, not their beauty or professionalism.

Named, according to the website, 'because the names of the people in the images as well as the names of those who provide them or those who took the pictures will never be known or shared', The Anonymous Project is also working on collaborative projects including a book and a documentary.

'We actually do have an important mission,' Shulman says. 'And it's a really important mission. And I think apart from all the fun moments of life, I saw that this was also something about the preservation of these images, which is very important to me, because color photography and technology used at the time was extraordinary. I mean, it was so ahead…. We realized that over time the color disappears. They haven't been preserved well and a lot of the slides we see, sometimes we get slides and the image has almost disappeared. I mean, it's almost not there. And it's very sad, obviously. You feel like some people are just disappeared into the ether.'

The project all started in January 2017 when Shulman was browsing on eBay. He saw a set of vintage slides up for sale and on a whim decided to buy them for about $11 (10 Euros). The 44-year-old filmmaker from London says he's always loved looking at and projecting slides, even when he was a child, so it wasn't a completely out-of-the-blue purchase.

When the box arrived with the collection of images – from the mid-1950s, he remembers – he picked up the first slide and practically fell in love right away.

'It was amazing,' he says. 'The quality and the colors were amazing… Every time I started looking at them, I saw these little moments of life and I just kind of fell in love.

'I started buying a couple of lots just out of interest and then I realized as I was looking at the images that there were a lot of similar images from different parts of the world. I was finding and somehow realized everyone has shared experiences and I sort of had this idea about creating this collection, which would be a collection of shared feelings and emotions... There was no defined idea at the beginning, to be honest. It kind of organically grew.'

He eventually called in his photo publisher friend Halkin and their collection grew. They bought more slides online and at flea markets and received donations from friends and other people from around the world who heard about their project through the press coverage they got. Shulman's initial interest had quickly 'snowballed' into The Anonymous Project.

'When I started looking, it really came from just this passion, this personal passion I had for slides and really just that format and that medium, which was so advanced of its time.'

Even with more than half a million slides in their possession, donations are still coming in every day. When Shulman speaks with DailyMail.com over the phone, he says 'two huge lots' have arrived that day.

'We need to get a bigger office,' he laughs.

Though they keep and store every slide they have received, Shulman and Halkin follow a system to whittle down the images from the 500,000 to their curated collection. One of the first steps is taking out the empty landscapes, which Shulman says makes up somewhere between 60 to 70per cent of the slides they receive.

'That actually makes it easier for us,' he says. 'We're really looking for human content. Or even if not, something that has some narrative sense to it… We don't look for the most beautiful photos, that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for images that tell a story. So it's not always the prettiest image, but it's an image that says something.'

He adds: 'It's not like these are the good ones and these are the bad ones, that's not how we feel about it. We feel that they all have worth.'

Shulman and Halkin go through several rounds of selections before choosing the images to be edited, numbered, scanned and added to the collection, which itself has categories or 'themes' including Home Sweet Home, When We Were Young, Sweet Dreams, By the Seaside and Cake – under which all the images are related to the dessert.

Regardless of whether the images make it into the collection or not, Shulman says they have organized all the slides in such a way that they know exactly where every single image comes from and when it was taken.

After about 14 months, The Anonymous Project's collection is mostly made up of American images – Shulman estimates about 60 to 70 per cent – likely because the technology was American. There are plenty of images from other countries including a good selection from Japan and the UK, though Shulman says they are trying to gather even more images from around the world.

The project's images date from around the late 1930s – the earliest color slides are from around '36-'37 – to the late 1980s. But despite the decades between then and now, Shulman is clear he's not a Luddite or a 'retro-freak', nor is he trying to challenge the digital world with the analog world.

'I am a total geek,' Shulman declares. 'I love digital technology… and that's the reason I do this, it's actually the reason I can do this project is because of the digital technology that exists today.

'What I think's amazing is that because my project's really about light – because slide images were made to be projected and were made to be seen through light – so when I look at them on a computer screen, I'm seeing them how they should be seen, because they're backlit and that's how they come out. When I look at them on my phone, I actually feel this is how this should be seen. When I see them printed up and on the wall, I feel not as attracted to them. So the actual addition of technology [has] just allowed me to do this project.'

He says he's a 'big fan' of contemporary photography and that there are plenty of wonderful things that are happening in the field today. And besides, he says, people back then weren't all that different than people are today.

'What's amazing is that people who are taking photos today and people who took photos then, it's not such a big difference… We feel that what happened then [and] what happened now, they're in two different worlds, but we're not so much that different, I feel. I think we all share the same hopes and dreams and things like this.'

He adds: 'A lot of the experiences I see and a lot of these little moments of time that I see… when you look at them, you see yourself in them. I think that's really something I've found is that I kind of, I really project myself into [the images].'

In January this year, when The Anonymous Project opened their physical exhibit in Paris for a couple of weeks, Shulman says it was mostly young people who attended the exhibit. Though he says it's likely many of them came because 'we're floating on a wave of retro-cool at the moment', he also thinks they came to 'see a world that they don't know'.

'The people that came to our exhibition were pretty much 80, 90 per cent young kids with skateboards under their arms and they were our main audience… They have no concept of this world, so when they see it, it seems so foreign.

'What's great is, at my age, I'm on the bridge between the two,' he adds. 'I think my interest came because I'm between the two worlds. But what's I think nice is that on that bridge there are people from both sides that take interest in stuff like that, which I think is great… I wouldn't have been able to start this project if I wasn't this age, because I don't believe that someone who's much, much younger would get it or would understand or would have any connection to this. I remember taking slides and my parents having slide shows and showing stuff like that.'

Shulman is certainly passionate about his project. Even after looking through hundreds of thousands of images over and over again, he still hasn't gotten bored or tired of it. Instead, he just becomes more attached to the pictures and the people in them.

'Someone was joking, he said, "you've got the biggest family in the world". And I kind of laughed because it's a bit true. I feel very responsible for these people who are mostly, to be honest, a lot of them are not here anymore. So I feel a kind of strong moral responsibility to these people to give them a second life, which is really amazing for me and also I feel very privileged. Every day, I go through and find these amazing.'

He adds: 'What I find about these slides that is extraordinary, is because they're amateur slides, they're not professional, people are generally always looking at the camera… And I think they're very, very intimate moments. And I find those very powerful sometimes.

'I think what's nice also is, they're often taking a good moment in life. I think in a world that's pretty difficult at the moment with everything that's going on, it's very nice to see these moments of life that are pretty much joyful and are full of hope and tenderness… And sometimes they're very poetic images.'

One of the things Shulman loves about The Anonymous Project is the endless directions he can go with the images.

'Often people, when they set out with a creative idea, they know where they want to go. What's great about this project is this project is taking us places. It's evolving. People will say, you should do this or that and we're very open to collaborating.

'What's great is the project takes us into a sort of historical side of the world. It also takes us into an artistic side of the world, it takes us into the photography side of the world, it takes us into a lot of different aspects. You can come in and out of this project in any direction you like. It sounds overwhelming when you say it, but when you're actually in it, I find it so comforting. The other way I find it so great every day to come in and have a new surprise every day. I feel really privileged to be in this position.'

One of the first endeavors of The Anonymous Project was a physical exhibition in Paris showing a part of the collection from January 24th to February 4th. The images were displayed on slideshows and screens and some of the small slides were set out on a light table. Several of the images were even printed, probably for the first time ever, and put on display.

Shulman says the physical exhibition was something he knew he wanted to do back when he was first starting the project last year, particularly because the slides are intended to be shown on projectors. Shulman says the exhibition began with portraits and eventually followed those people and themes throughout the space, ending on a 1950s-modeled living room with a fire place, a couch and a projector.

'It becomes very much between cinema and photography,' he says. 'That's where we kind of sit comfortably, between projecting and creating stories that way.'

The exhibition was so successful that they will be going to London in September, around the same time that they plan to start working on a documentary, which will follow a couple of boxes that have been sent to The Anonymous Project as they try to find the identities of people in all the slides.

They are also working on a collaboration for a book, where the project will be sending images to several French authors who will write new fiction around those images. The other details of the project are meant to stay secret for now, Shulman says, because they're still in the middle of the project.

'The idea is that our project has become a collaborative art project,' he says. 'As someone who's a filmmaker and works in the artistic domain, I suddenly realize the value of collaborating when you have different collaborations with different kinds of mediums, which is really exciting.'

He adds, laughing: 'As we have these collaborations, it's started to take over my life. But it's actually a good take over. I'm kind of happy. I think it's a little bit stronger than I am and I'm still giving into it because I love it so much. I really do feel so incredibly passionate about the project and it links in very much with my work as a filmmaker. I mean, we're putting the images together to make new stories and it's all about narration, so it feels very close to what I'm doing anyway. But it's a lot of time.'

Though the documentary is going to be focused on trying to find the identities of people from the slides in specific boxes, Shulman says he and Halkin don't really intend to worry so much about who the people are in the images.

'The reason we called it [anonymous] is 'cause we didn't really want people to focus on that,' he says. 'I think we like the idea [that] it wasn't about who the person was, but it's more about what they represented.'

That's not to say Shulman doesn't want to know who the people are, just that they don't intend to focus too much on that part of the project. As he says: 'I don't think that's our primary goal.'

'I couldn't think of a better way to sit down and talk about them and get a background on those peop... that person. That would be amazing, it would give more value to these images to me. But it wasn't the primary reason,' he says.

In an unusual case, however, they did get a box of slides donated from the neighbor of a man who had passed away. The neighbor wrote a note to The Anonymous Project giving them a bit of the man's background story along with the slides.

'She wrote a beautiful letter, a really stunning letter about who he was and his voice and what he sounded like and [that] he ended up bagging in Wal Mart when he was an old man on his own… I found it really strong, actually, to have that background and see the images. It was extraordinary, but it's rare.'

Inside the fascinating archive of anonymous vintage photographic slides from 1930s to the 80s that a filmmaker bought on eBay. Do you recognize anybody? By Ann Schmidt.  The Daily Mail , April 6, 2018.

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