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Remember ffffound? Are there any sites like that still around?
Back in the day https://ffffound.com/ was one of my biggest inspirations for imagery and creative ephemera.
I miss it sometimes and have a vast archive of downloaded inspiration. I discovered a lot of material under the radar of pop culture.
Kind of like picking up a circa 2009 vice magazine from a shop. I was seeing and feeling things that felt textural and well curated.
Is there something around that I haven’t seen?
For those unfamiliar with the site, here is a snapshot from 2017 (shortly before it closed down):
(NSFW) https://web.archive.org/web/20170314074430/http://ffffound.com/
It was just so well curated and tasteful
Looking at the web archive link posted by @cfabbro, I'm not sure if this is the same site as I was thinking of, or if it changed over the years to become different than I remember. I recall a site that had tons of found photographs, notes, etc... I loved that site, and was just thinking of it a few months ago and wondering whether such a thing was possible anymore. I used to find pieces of photos, notes, etc regularly, but almost never anymore. In our digital world all of those notes and photos are exchanged by text, and then disappear to be forever lost. I wonder what the impact on culture will be. I still have some photos and notes from my childhood, but today's generation will never have such tangible artifacts to hold on to.
You could try going back in time a bit on WayBackMachine to see if it is actually the site you were thinking of:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170314000000*/http://ffffound.com/
There appear to be some pretty lengthy gaps in the snapshots, so it's possible the site changed hands at some point before it finally shut down in 2017.
Are you thinking of found magazine ?
I was also a big fan of this site in the past.
Sometimes I do find the odd grocery list laying around, but the only photographs I tend to find are in the thrift store piles.
Yes, that was it! I seem to recall it being a website before they did the magazine thing, but it’s been years, so I don’t remember specifics.
I guess that’s why ephemera is such an important word in its description.
Circa 2012-2016 felt farm more prime before a lot of slightly specialized citations came to bear.
Thanks for your input!
My point was that everything feels more ephemeral now than it did before.
For example, photographs. When I was young film was expensive, developing it even more so. Much of my childhood was not recorded, and sometimes I wish I could go back and look at old photos and videos of my friends. I see how my children (youngest is 21, not really children) approach photos, they’re disposable. So many important moments captured and sent via Snapchat, which immediately discard the photo. I try to tell them that they will regret this later, and suggest that they archive them somewhere, but they don’t seem to understand the future value of that.   I didn’t even have the option, they do, and don’t see what they are losing.
I feel like Are.na might interest you. Someone actually archived FFFFOUND! and uploaded it to a channel on there.
Your link is quite interesting. I’ve never gotten into Pinterest/Tumblr/etc, which seem to be the closest points of comparison [they do suffer form a difficulty describing the value of their product, I wish there was a bit more visibility into the public pages up front], but I think I can see the value of being able to stick random things out there w/ various categorizations in order to come back to them later, perhaps without ever knowing when I might do so, but fail to see a use case for myself that could justify the cost of a premium plan.
Are you a premium user? If so, what do you see the value being?