Couples: Found Photos

I recently came across this book, and I love it. I work in the Graphic Design Department for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon. As a keen photographer and lover of traditional photography, I find this book refreshing and uplifting. It is full of images that have captured a particular moment between man and woman. It reminds the viewer of a time when a photograph was a valued possession and a keepsake. I like that the images represent an intimate, personal moment between two people. Page after page depicts a different couple in a different time and place, but with the common them of togetherness and intimacy. As a keen photographer I love that the book shows the prints in their original form. The old polaroids with the white borders, the photo booth prints depicted at actual size, black and white, and hand tinted prints are all represented. This helps the honesty of the images and processes, and the realness and truth of a captured moment. This book is a wonderful collection. It is a little treasure of intimate moments between couples and now because of Karin Elsener and Roger Handy, these moments are shared with anyone who is lucky enough to page through it.

Though "Couples" is more than a coffee table book, if it were, it would certainly stimulate conversation. Mr. Handy and Ms. Elsener prove to possess keen eyes for the witty and purely romantic in their photographic survey of American couples in years past. The fact that the pictures are found photos makes them all the more alluring in their mystery.

A wonderful compilation of photos that capture the essence of relationships. Kudos and accolades to Roger Handy & Karin Elsner

Roger Handy's project in this book and his other two is a good example of how much talent and intelligence exists outside of the orthodox mainstream. Roger has spent years developing his vision and consequently has explored the unexplored territory of vernacular photography before anyone knew it was there. He has honed and re-honed his collection of snapshots in a way consistent only with his peculiar genius, a genius for constructing an atmosphere that is pure poetry, a poetry based on an individual, subjective interpretation of life. In Roger's books, a vision of life in America between 1900 and the present, is constructed out of raw materials supplied by the very people who lived through this period: us, our parents and our grandparents. In other words this is the real deal, the American experience: the good. the bad and the ugly. Never have works of art been available for so little for so many. May Roger continue forever to enlighten us to the banal poetry of the 20th century. This is history, this is art, this is our collective life and experience. Bravo!!!

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Roger Handy and Karin Elsener bring you Couples: Found Photos, a collection of paired portraits that manages to achieve adorability without corniness. Every glossy page brings sweethearts' snapshots. Each comes complete with its own story - provided by the readers, not the authors; that's the real genius of the book: the acrobatics it lures the imagination into with each turn of the page. Flip to the black and white photo showing the back of a couple standing on a dock at a lake. He's holding a fishing pole. She's wearing a scarf on her head and is scratching a dog's neck. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Handy and Elsener provide you about 208,000 with which to construct your own stories. This collection evokes curiosity, nostalgia and a sense of love's universality. The photographs feature couples of all ages and sizes; squeaky clean and roguishly passionate. Buy this book for your favorite couple's wedding or anniversary. Leave it on your coffee table and spark a discussion at a dinner party about the nature of love and intimacy. Or do as the season dictates and give it to the one you love, perhaps with a picture of the two of you pasted on the inside of the back cover to celebrate that you're paired, squared and mad for each other. - Heather Pamula [...]