RESEARCH : Found Magazine

Found Magazine is an online magazine that catalogues found scraps of paper.

The creator, Davy Rothbart, started the site after finding a note on the windshield of his car "one snowy winters night in Chicago a few years back". The note was written to some guy named Mario and looked like this:



The creators of the site love this note as it has a combination of both anger and hopefulness [page me later]. Shopping lists, kids homework, love letters, birthday cards and more are all displayed on the site.

These scraps of paper offer an amazing insight into the lives of those that wrote them. The viewer is given a clear impression of how the writer was feeling at the time of writing.

The creators have published a couple of actual magazines containing a number of the found items and these are for sale on the website. There is also Dirty Found - a magazine containg slightly more smutty found items! This magazine realtes more closely to the definition of voyeurism - it offers a slightly more personal and erotic look into the lives of strangers.