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John Foster has built a cottage industry out of his collection of objects and photos that give rise to wonder. His Accidental Mysteries websites (accidentalmysteries.blogspot.com, accidentalmysteries.com) show off his eye for “odd and unusual things that have a story behind them,” as he puts it, “a story that we have to make up ourselves.” Here, Foster annotates four of his favorite finds.
“This is a page out of a photo album dated 1932. It’s a girl and her girlfriends from the ’30s. Most of the images are hand-tinted, and there are very faint little names under some of the images. I love the way the person used silver ink to outline each one. But what I love even more is the missing image in the lower right corner. That adds a touch of mystery to me, and that’s the key to the whole piece.”
“It’s just a simple snapshot, but there’s a very odd quality to it. To me, this woman looks as if she’s patiently waiting, and there’s a strange dialogue between the baby doll and herself. It’s very possible that a child took this photo, from the angle it’s taken. This is one of thousands of found snapshots I have. The kind of snapshot that probably didn’t make it into the family album is what I look for.”
“This is about 26 inches tall, and it’s heavy. It used to be a garden ornament. I love that the chipped paint reveals years of overpainting and decay. It was bright red, it was brown, it was black, and now it has a beautiful patina to it. The broken legs revealing the armature hearken back to some sort of Roman artifact, but of course it's only 50, 60 years old or so. It looks ancient and proud. It's obviously damaged very badly. If it weren't damaged, I wouldn't like it.”
“This is one of those games that uses marbles. This particular game goes by a lot of names, but it is commonly called Wahoo, which is similar to Parcheesi. It's homemade; the idea of making your own game board is an early American folk-art tradition. But this was done in the ’50s, at a time when games were readily available. What's more, the artist used countertop linoleum with aluminum sides, which are modern materials. So it’s a collision of modern and folk art.”
