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Lost property and subjects: Lost and Found Office

In every city there are one or more Lost and Found Offices, where what has been lost is deposited while waiting for its owner to come looking for it. Very often the most disparate and unpredictable things remain there for years gathering dust, never to be asked back, as if in a time box.
In this spirit I propose here my personal Lost and Found Office: Like the cleaner in a train carriage at the end of service, I have gone about collecting what has been lost or is misplaced, whether in a narrow sense, such as an English fan’s scarf, or a group of balloons abandoned near an underground station, or in a more extended sense, such as the expression of a banner-bearer at the procession for Our Lady of the Arch, or the feet sticking out of the blanket of a lost homeless person.

There is poetry in the bewilderment, both in the sense of losing oneself (“…e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare…”), and in the most disparate objects reduced to wrecks beached in the ravines of the city.
Thus even the photographer’s eye gets lost behind the details, the analogies, behind the obvious or the strange, thus rightfully becoming part of the Lost and Found Office.

Castle of cards. Rome, Borgo Pio, February 12th 2024.
Worlds that brush against each other. Rome, Via dei Banchi Nuovi, March 19th 2024.
Balloons. Rome, Numidio Quadrato metro station, Via Tuscolana, March 5th 2024.
Behind the Madonna dell’Arco. Napoli, Via dei Tribunali, February 25th 2024.
Tramp wardrobe. Rome, Piazza di Ponte Umberto I, March 6th 2024.
End of the line. Rome, Largo Tassoni, March 14th 2024.
Lost by a Manchester supporter. Rome, Via della Conciliazione, February 3rd 2024.
The lost eye in a fictitious aquarium. Rome, Piazza Navona, March 28th 2024.
The she-wolf and the beer. Rome, Borgo Pio, March 28th 2024.
Lost in slumber. Rome, Piazza Americo Capponi, March 23th 2024.
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Pietro Coppa

Nato e vissuto a Roma, fotografo per antica passione.

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2 Comments

  1. Fascinating Lost and found but who will ever come to claim these objects – or subjects for better say: only your expert eye can catch them and save from oblivion

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