The lovingly designed interior of the “specialty store for forgotten private photographs” in Weimar clearly reflects the idea that private snapshots, photo albums and slides can not only be collected but can also be used for artistic purposes – taking a creative approach to a material that was not intended as art when it was first produced. In this way Anke Heelemann straddles the borderline that was drawn in order to separate photography into art or document, and also to distinguish between amateur and art photography. The creative use of ‘forgotten’ photographs permeates this boundary and bestows the images with significance in terms of the construction of identity and collective memory. The fact that the context of the respective images appears to have been lost – given that they have mainly been found in actual or virtual flea markets – should not exclude the possibility that they may also generate a specific form of knowledge about gestures, poses and facial expressions by evoking a resonance within the viewer.
Further information on the Fotothek can be found at http://antville.medien.uni-weimar.de/fotothek/stories/10830/
