Other People's Lives

I have been trying to figure out what it's called but I can't quite come up with it.  Maybe that's because I'm not educated enough in psychology or psychiatry or whatever ology teaches such things.

I thought, is it something like a form of "social" voyeurism?  Sue said, no, that's not what it is.

So what is it that make people like to peruse pictures from other people's lives?  When you see a big wall of pictures at work or at school, aren't you somehow drawn to it?  When you look at someone's Facebook page for the first time, aren't you always glad when you find they have a ton of pictures?  I know I am.  It's like we're intrigued by other people's lives.  We know what kind of stuff we like to do, but we want to see what they do.  We want to see how they live.  We want to see where they've gone on vacation.  We want to learn about them.

I'm a sucker for masses of pictures.  The time passes quickly when I'm interested in someone's life as portrayed in pictures.  I look at everything.  In addition to what they took the pictures of, I like to see people that have a photographic talent.

But to me I think it's mostly the 'peering into other people's private lives' that I find interesting.  Sometimes it's almost like I'm doing something naughty by looking at somebody's private pictures.  Does that stop me?  No... If anything it makes it even more fun.

Take for instance a website I found on the internet called Found Film.  The guy is a collector of cameras, but he is also a seasoned veteran at developing any kind of film himself.  If he ever finds a camera for sale that has film in it, he has to buy it so he can develop it and see what kind of treasure it holds!  I think it's cool.

Or in another example, the guy that bought boxes upon boxes of negatives (over 20,000) at an estate auction, only to find that he had stumbled upon one of the biggest treasure troves of great pictures by the late Vivian Maier, who was just an ordinary lady that liked taking pictures.

Where am I going with this?

Yesterday I went out and bought myself another camera.  This time, I bought a small Canon A560 point & shoot camera--small enough to carry in my pocket.  It was a Craigslist find, and it was only $40.  I bought it from an Asian gentleman with broken English.  When I got it home and really started messing with it in more depth I found that it contained 65 pictures and two little video clips.  Upon investigation, we found that it must have been used by the sons and his friends during a trip to China.  How did I figure that out?  By the crown jewel of the whole bunch:

Sue like this first one the next best I think, but here are a few others from the bunch:

There were a lot of the school pictures.  It appeared that they had visited two grades of kids.  I noticed that cellphones seemed to be in everyone's hands in one picture or another.

As far as the bicycle, don't you wonder what the story is behind that?  They don't seem very concerned do they?

 

Anyway, that's just a little bit of what I'm talking about.  It's fun taking a peek into other people's lives to see what they're up to isn't it?  Had I not, I would never have known that it's apparently okay to have a slightly racially-sensitive email address (if it's your race that is) like John does: