by Darklady
11/29/04

Surely I'm not the only person in America who enjoys late night strolls not only because the streets are quiet and the lights soften the harshness of modern living but also because the world of humans transforms and reveals itself differently than it does in the light of day. At night the windows of houses become the windows into people's lives. An alert nightwalker will see couples or families watching television, reading by firelight, washing dinner dishes - and sometimes undressing for bed or even making love. There's a special intimacy about this unexpected form of voyeurism that both connects the viewer to the viewed while simultaneously maintaining a unique distance much like watching a play starring regular folk instead of professional actors. It is this realism, this desire to see how the real girl/guy next door look and act that attracts people to amateur porn.

The same strange fascination draws people to Jason Bitner's Found Magazine
(http://www.foundmagazine.com).

Found items are precisely what they sound like; items of interest that are simply found. Not manufactured, not designed, not intentionally put together in hopes that they will be distributed or promoted as art. Sometimes they are profound, like the heart shaped stone a friend of mine found on the ground of a German concentration camp, most times they are merely curiosities that may provoke thought, introspection, or amusement. Bitner's annual magazine uses a "punk collage" approach to found items, most of which are discarded or lost photographs and notes. For four years Bitner and his cohort Davy Rothbart have assembled Found Magazine around items sent to them by people around the country who came across oddities of interest on park benches, beneath vending machines, inside of abandoned buildings, and wherever people absentmindedly leave things behind.

Some of those items were a little too racy for Found, however. Which is why Bitner and Rothbart are introducing Dirty Found (http://www.dirtyfound.com) to the world of amateur anthropology, sociology, and just plain perverse curiosity. This special edition of Found focuses exclusively on materials deemed too racy for the regular publication. Sexually explicit diaries, naughty illustrations, tawdry snapshots, depraved doodles, and amateur erotica make up this first volume of materials not necessarily as arousing as they are culturally fascinating. According to Bitner, the 80 pages of Dirty Found No. 1 provide "neat little insights into how we all deal with sex and sexuality, lust and anger, love."

Few of the works contained in Dirty Found No. 1 would quality for gallery shows or genre publication. They are not examples of professional work but of everyday people jotting down their thoughts, immortalizing a now anonymous nude or barely clad model, drawing genitalia bigger than life, misspelling words, and showing us a world often decades old and therefore not only strange to our eyes but also somehow safer due to its distance. If the devil is in the details then he is certainly to be found, so to speak, in Dirty Found No 1, for it is the details that truly sound captivating. What kind of person kept a photo of a man being given an enema? Who is the woman in red lingerie with the big hair? Why would anyone take naughty photos of women in baggy underwear? Context is everything and in the case of found items, there is no context - which is where the viewer comes in, for it becomes their treat to conjecture and create context for each item.

In a world where digital technology is rapidly replacing archival treasures such as Polaroids, magazines like Dirty Found may be our last peepholes into a not so distant past that is rapidly receding from view. Dirty Found may not be refined erotica, it may not be high art - but it sounds like a fascinating late night stroll through the shadowy psyche of the human mind. Copies can be purchased online, at independent bookstores, or Tower Records.