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Finger in Your Eye



all photos: Collection of Barbara Levine/projectB.com

We have all done it - sometime between pressing down the shutter and its closure, our finger(s) slip into the frame resulting in a picture featuring a giant phantom shape (sometimes with manicured nail) hovering over a car or building or appearing to touch the subjects in the photo. This 'accident' is especially evident in vintage snapshots when people were still getting used to cameras and before you could see what your picture would look like before you snapped it.

The ‘finger in your eye’ accident (my term of endearment for these snapshots) becomes the subject of the photograph. Because the fingertip(s) shown in the photo is the photographer’s, we become aware viscerally of the relationship between photographer, subject and camera. The resulting photos are abstract and accidentally mysterious.

Back when these photos were made, they were probably tossed aside as mistakes. Looking at them now, these seemingly banal images look strange, almost as if they are scenes from a lost mystery or science fiction story. What story would you make up about them?

All photos: Collection of Barbara Levine/projectB.com

• Bill says...

  The photo of the G.E.M. store is of a Government Employees Mart store; most of these were located in the Washington D.C. area. I remember shopping there with my father as a young boy.

  On December 01, 2013

• Mark Kalan says...

  Back in the 1970s I had a book of photos called, “Digit” and it was a collection of pictures like these with fingers in the frame.

  On November 21, 2013