Traffic: Snapshots Collection

Christian Skrein, who has also been known to work as a photographer, is lately best known as the proprietor of Snapshots Archiv Skrein (S.A.S.), a collection of nearly one million snapshots and anonymous photographs of every kind from all over the globe—the world’s largest such accumulation. Amateur candids, family portraits, straight-faced documentation, double exposures and other potentially beautiful glitches—Skrein seeks them all out with equal enthusiasm. For Traffic, one of the first in a series of thematic albums curated from this smorgasbord, Skrein has combed the contents of thousands of old photo albums and shoeboxes for the best pictures concerning travel and transportation, including discoveries from the early days of handheld cameras as well as more recent personal snapshots. Once again, as in the widely enjoyed Snapshot: The Eye of the Century, the most aesthetically notable and otherwise curious photographs from the SAS illuminate contemporary life and art in unexpected ways.