Anonymous: Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers

"Haunting, cryptic photographs…fire the imagination. The images come with no explanation, only speculation, so we are free to let our minds roam wild." —Miami Herald

The wonderfully diverse images reproduced here include many of transcendent beauty and psychological insight, all with the magical, mysterious charge that comes from speculating on the circumstances in which they were taken. Novelist William Boyd, whose introduction identifies thirteen ways in which to look at photographs, explains: "The anonymous photograph…makes us ask, with new concentration, what it is about a photograph that elevates it above the casual and the banal…why some images move and enthrall and remain in our memories."

The number of collectors of anonymous photographs is growing exponentially. Robert Flynn Johnson has spent more than a decade on a personal journey of discovery through what were previously uncharted waters to find the works reproduced here. Reflecting themes that govern our lives—birth, death, love, war, travel, celebrity—these photographs are pleasurable and poignant, giving insight into the human secrets with which we can all identify. Over 220 illustrations.