Utilizing found negatives from anonymous photographers made between 1900-1960, artist Ryan McIntosh attempts to excavate an archival absence within the incomplete history of photography. Reevaluated, these images become like boomerangs, thrown out and returning again, representing an endless loop of creation, destruction, and rebirth. Underlying threads of tension and ambiguity run through the images, often as the physical world starts to creep into the edges of photos, revealing the backyards, interiors, and unintentional margins of the frame.

As an artistic conceptual gesture, reexamining these photographs highlights a shift from an artist who creates to an artists who recognizes and reflects. This process reasserts authorship through the act of identifying, collecting and curating.

Photography has always been a conjurer’s art, a delicate truce between presence and absence that reflects the lived experiences. Now, the photographic medium must exist in a contested space with Artificial Intelligence. If A.I. unsettles our faith in the photographic image, we must also contend once again with the haunting magic that has been present since the start. While these images may not be perfect photographs, they attempt to serve as perfect unanswered questions.