bighappyfunhouse.com

Chicago photoblogger Ron Slattery gets the NYT treatment for his bighappyfunhouse.com.

Almost all photoblogs have a contemporary feel - a product of the instant digital photography age. By contrast, bighappyfunhouse.com has the feel of a group photoblog that pulls the past into the present, with a jarring voyeuristic effect.

For years, Ron Slattery, a 40-year-old entrepreneur from Chicago, has scoured flea markets, garage sales and trash bins for old photos. Last year, he started putting them onto the Internet: vacation photos from the beach, snapshots of pets, family portraits at birthday parties.

The photos are anonymous, both the subjects and the photographers. At a time when we routinely browse photo albums on Snapfish and Kodak's gallery, there is something disquieting to see photos that were never meant to be public. His photos span from the late 1800's to almost the present - a mishmash of hairdos, fashions and photo quality throughout the decades. So far, he has put up more than 900 photos. He often wonders about the people shown, smiling and not, and where their lives took them after that instantaneous meeting with a lens.

In May, he received an e-mail message from a man who had found a picture of himself and a friend, who was wearing a Hello Kitty costume, on his site. The picture was taken in 1982 in Houston when the two men, then teenagers, were hired by someone to pass out balloons at the grand opening of an office supply store. "What is driving me CRAZY is this...How did you come across that photo?" the man wrote.

Kudos, Ron. Your site gives me my daily dosage of smiles.

(Link via Gapers Block.)