Photos that you might have found down the back of your sofa are now big business! In 2005, the American artist Richard Prince's photograph of a photograph, Untitled (Cowboy), was sold for $ 1, 248, 000. Prince is certainly not the only contemporary artist to have worked with so-called "found photographs"--a loose term given to everything from discarded  prints discovered in a junk shop to old advertisements or amateur photographs from a stranger's family album. The German artist Joachim Schmid, who believes "basically everything is worth looking at", has gathered discarded photographs, postcards and newspaper images since 1982. In his on-going project, Archiv, he groups photographs of family life according to themes: people with dogs; teams; new cars; dinner with the family; and so on. Like Schmid, the editors of several self-published art magazines also champion   found photographs. One of _ , called simply Found, was born one snowy night in Chicago, when Davy Rothbard returned to his car to find under his wiper  an angry note intended for some else: "Why's your car HERE at HER place?" The note became the starting point for Rothbard's addictive publication, which features found photographs sent in by readers, such a poster discovered in our drawer. The whole found-photograph phenomenon has raised some questions. Perhaps one of the most difficult is: can these images really be considered as art? And if so, whose art? Yet found photographs produced by artists, such Richard Prince, may riding his horse hurriedly to meet someone? Or how did Prince create this photograph? It's anyone's guess. In addition, as we imagine the back-story to the people in the found photographs artists, like Schmid, have collated  , we also turn toward our own photographic albums. Why is memory so important to us? Why do we all seek to freeze in time the faces of our children, our parents, our lovers, and ourselves? Will they mean anything to anyone after we've gone? In the absence of established facts, the vast collections of found photographs give our minds an opportunity to wander freely. That, above all, is why they are so fascinating. The author's attitude towards found photographs can be described as   _  .
critical doubtful optimistic satisfied