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I have, on
occasion, been lucky enough to find something - a scrap of
paper, a discarded photo, a tattered letter - on the train, bus or street that is worth hanging on to, something so unique or bizarre that it makes me wonder where the heck it came from and how,
by chance, it found its way into my life. About a year ago I found the coolest Christmas ornament, clearly made by a young boy in elementary school. It’s a plastic ball
adorned with a picture of a lion, colored in red and green crayon. I hung it up in my home this Christmas past and it was the decoration most commented on. Thank you little boy whom I’ll never meet, your creation made my holiday season a little merrier.
Found Magazine was built on such finds. I’ve looked through a number of issues over the past few years and have wondered whether or not the items submitted were actually
"found" or created by someone and submitted as a found item. I suppose there’s no real way to find that
out but, either way, Found magazine makes for interesting reading.
One of the most remarkable things about Found is its
universality; it seems to be the hipster magazine that everyone can enjoy. People love to see crap taken out of context and made fun of.
Finding humor in discarded crap is an important way of life in this day and age and when that crap is
even remotely obscene, it is even better. It’s like discovering a secret and sharing it with the world. Seeing photographs of people in compromising positions with their eyes
blacked out by a censorship strip is a way of living out the
voyeuristic urge that we're all hard-wired with, the dream of having the power of invisibility. In most cases,
as outsiders we would never be invited into the private world of
these people. Getting a chance to look into it feels special.
And dirty.
As you can imagine, Dirty Found, the offshoot of Found designed
to showcase items of questionable moral value, includes the raciest things people have sent to the publication, printed as a book (though it still resembles a magazine).
Dirty Found is full of stuff that wouldn’t be able to be published in anything other than a pornographic magazine, but in making it
into a book all its own, Found has gotten away with it.
The candid snapshots and drawings that comprise the 80 page,
full color Dirty Found volume are interesting enough to keep the
reader (a term I use loosely) interested, but the biggest treasure in the collection is the segments of
found stories and/or love notes that people have sent in. Everything from notes scrawled on
napkins to agreements about a couple's sexual practices (signed by both individuals) is in here. Some pieces are disturbing but also comforting in a
way; no matter how sordid we see ourselves it is nice to know
that there’s always somebody weirder than you out there in the world.
Whether that knowledge frightens or delights you is on your conscience.
Ranging from S&M leather/ball gag pictures to seemingly third-grade sketches of boobies, Dirty Found has something that will make everyone laugh, if not feel just
a little filthy.
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Bob Ladewig, a staff writer for LAS, lives
in Chicago where he brings the funny.
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SEE ALSO >
www.dirtyfound.com
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