Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past

“Sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures.”Talking Pictures is a haunting collection of antique found photographs—with evocative inscriptions that bring these lost personal moments to life.“The best inscriptions make a snapshot feel current, no matter when it was taken.”I absolutely loved the introduction to this story. In a short amount of pages Ransom Riggs managed to make me feel hopeful, fearful and, for a split second, tearful.“Maybe the picture is blurred because she could [...]

I was out of the loop during the whole Ransom Riggs craze of 2011. I have never read that book about the home where the peculiar children go, even though it's said to contain a bunch of cool, creepy old photos, and I love cool, creepy old photos. This obsession was noted by goodreader karen (hi!) when we visited a NYC junk shop called "The Serial Killer Store" [sic], and I proceeded to dig through a giant crate of old photos for entirely too long and to her general consternation, as she found th [...]

You have to take a look at this book. I can try to tell you how amazing it is, how each page gives you a glimpse into some stranger's life through a window you haven't been invited to view, like driving down a street at night and glimpsing snippets of people through their lighted windows. But here you get a fuller story, or enough to goad you into filling in what's missing. I could try to tell you how heart-wrenching some of these partly-told stories can be, but it won't be very convincing. You [...]

I met Ransom Riggs and he talked about this book. He has a hobby of finding old photos at flea markets. He was intrigued by what people had written on the photos. This is a collection of those found photos. I'm looking forward to this one.

“Leaving home for war. I have pictures of first day to school, first day to high school, first day to college and first day off to war. This one I could easily + gladly have done without.”This book is utterly beautiful.

Will this be a creepy, macabre and mildly disturbing collection of photographs?Fingers crossed.

I am admittedly a huge fan of vintage ephemera (a quick glance at my Pinterest profile will confirm this), so it's no surprise to me that I wound up loving this collection of "found" photographs. Ransom Riggs (of "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" fame) is a collector of vintage photos, many of them dug up from antique stores and flea markets. Their original owners are unknown, as are their settings, subjects and contexts. The only clues to these photos are the inscriptions written on [...]

Those old vintage photographs you find in your grandmother's attic, or loosened in albums that drift to the floor when you open the album, all yellowed, torn and shabby edged, with people you don't know a thing about. And you keep wondering who they are. Or what lives they had.Imagine those photos all stacked up in boxes, or bundled up, forgotten when their owners passes away, given or thrown away when their offspring don't know what to do with them. They change hands, or end up at yards sales, [...]

This was interesting. I really should get around to reading the series already. Pictures were also good.

I think it's a tragedy (I'm not overstating) that people don't print out pictures, write in diaries, or write letters anymore, so I am the ideal audience for this book. I know everyone believes all of this can be done on Facebook, but what about in the future? How are grandkids/biographers going to know anything about anyone?! Don't get me started. Anyway, this is just a collection of old photos with captions--handwritten on the back, by the photo-takers--and it totally made my day.

A bunch of old photos with stuff writen on the back. Sad, hilarious and deeply creepy. I loved it!

Ransom Riggs wrote Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Probably the best part of that book were the unusual and sometimes creepy pictures the story was built around. Mr. Riggs collects "lost pictures".He tells us the story of the first photo he bought from a bin of miscellaneous photos in a junk shop when he was 13. Pictures dumped, spilled and torn from albums, frames and wallets with no information except for the words scribbled on them. He bought the first and then some years later b [...]

After 30 years in the antique business I have seen many old photos but this collection of photographs with their commentary I found riveting and hard to put down. I admit I have always found these discarded bits of people lives fascinating but would never have imagined this group that takes you into all levels of emotion with their littles bits of scribbled information. I'm sure I will revisit it many times to experience it all over again. Thanks Briana for finding it and adding it to your to-re [...]

Article first published as Book Review: Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued From the Past by Ransom Riggs on Blogcritics.Review also appeared on my blog: Book Addict 24-7I received a copy for reviewRansom Riggs’s Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued From the Past is an unforgettable trip into the past. The stories found on the back of the pictures presented offer their own little surprises, adding depth to a seemingly simple text. Riggs’s shows the reader that sometimes on [...]

This may possibly be one of the best books ever. I fell madly in love with Ransom Riggs through the first Miss Peregrine book--the thing I loved best about the book were the strange and beautiful photos. This book is a collection of "found" photos--some borrowed from friends, some found by the author himself. As if I did not adore him enough the prologue to the book explains that Ransom Riggs has enjoyed collecting old pictures of people he did not know since he was a child. This is a habit I sh [...]

I saw this book years ago and put it on my TBR shelf. I could never find it in any of the bookstores so I decided that one day I would just order it off . I went looking at one day and noticed that one of the book sellers was selling a used copy and I just had to have it. The author and I share the same hobby of collecting old unwanted photo's. I can't for the life of me understand how anyone can throw these away. I would give my right kidney to be able to find photos of my ancestors. As it sta [...]

This is a strange and interesting book. The author has a hobby - he collects old photographs of people he does not know. There is a catch though - the photos need text of some kind written on it. This book is a curation of some of the photos from the author's collection. The photos are all black and white, and while the photos are interesting in themselves, it is the text that gives you a peek into these stranger's lives. The handwritten words on either the back or the front of the photos docume [...]

I loved Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, so I was anxious to read Talking Pictures.Riggs continues his obsessive collection of photographs of unknown people in this book, but doesn't build a story around them as he did with Miss Peregrine. Instead, he categorizes the photos and lets them do the talking as he shares whatever has been written on them. I was totally sucked into this book and finished it in one sitting but afterward I felt like a voyeur and that I had invaded strangers' [...]

I own this book sort of by accident but I found it very moving in parts and I am glad I have it. I originally bought it thinking it was going to be similar to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, a story based around old photographs from the author's collection. Although Talking Pictures is not a story, I would encourage you to get it from the library if you don't want to actually buy it because of the glimpse it gives you into the past, into a very different time when photos were more p [...]

*4.5 Stars*I have literally wanted to read this for YEARS and just happened upon it at the library today (again, in my whole day of nothing to do). I LOVE old pictures. I probably like abandoned places a bit more since they have more of an air of mystery, but these were just SO COOL. I can't get over it. The only reason I took off half a star is because some of the messages on the pictures were typed up below so it was easier to read, but others weren't. I can read cursive pretty well, but somet [...]

I loved this book. I really love old photographs. I love thinking about who the people in the photographs could have been. I've got a good box full of them from a flea market from a few years back. Mostly portraits, though. In this book, there are many wondrous photos with funny, sad, and strange captions.

Beautiful book and project. Especially meaningful since I too go to thrift stores and collect old pictures to either use in my own writing or as prompts for my students.

Incredible moving, I teared up, had lumps in my throat and laughed out loud. Very creative man to take old pics and write novels for the masses 😬

This is an intriguing collection of photographs. It's very Ransom Riggs.There were a few times I couldn't read the writing and could have used a typed caption. Other than that, it's great!

Non ricordo con precisione come, la scorsa primavera, scoprii questo libro: stavo forse leggendo su qualche recensione al bestseller dello stesso autore (Ransom Riggs), Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Per chi non lo sapesse, dovrebbe essere, a quanto ho capito, un romanzo per ragazzi con un tocco di horror, ambientato in una casa dove sono ospitati ragazzini con “poteri” speciali (levitazione, invisibilità, ecc.): quel che lo rende interessante, però, è che è illustrato c [...]

Cuando terminé de leer El hogar de Miss Peregrine para niños peculiares, la novela ilustrada con fotografías reales de Ransom Riggs, pensé que la falta de coherencia entre las imágenes y la historia era un punto negativo que pesaba mucho sobre el resultado final pero que, al mismo tiempo, la afición del autor a coleccionar fotos antiguas lo convertía en un hombre interesante.Talking Pictures es un libro de fotografía diferente. Las imágenes están divididas en siete bloques: Haciendo el [...]

My love and interest for such picture books started with Humans of New York and Frank Warren's PostSecret. I wasn't disappointed with Ransom Riggs' wonderful collection of photographs here either, it took me back to piles and piles of photo albums that I used to file through with my parents, some of which were marked by comments and labeled by a date and time (most probably my father's work), and I remember how strange it was to see a life with familiar faces from times I never knew. Times befor [...]

"I have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know."Author Ransom Riggs compiled a collection of unusual vintage snapshots, their quirky, hilarious or heartbreaking captions the unifying theme. Organized into seven sections: Clowning Around, Love and Marriage, Times of Trouble, Life During Wartime, Janet Lee, Hide This Please, and Unsolved Mysteries. One of my favorites? The caption reads: "You can Put this in your scrap book + remember how much fun we had teaching me how to dri [...]

He's a collector of vernacular photos from flea markets, like me, and I first became aware of him through some stories on the Mental Floss website. He's even written a fantasy book sort of based on some of those photos, which I didn't like very much. Anyway, one of his essays was about photos with writing on the back that makes an otherwise unmemorable pictures suddenly meaningful. Like a road in Texas, and when you turn it over it says "This is the spot where Daddy had his accident and died." T [...]

My wife purchased this for me as a Christmas gift after I enjoyed the pictures sprinkled through the author's novel, "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children." This isn't a novel, so don't expect that. It's a picture book and can be read in one sitting, but it's also one you may feel compelled to read again and again.I've always been fascinated with old photographs - the fact that a moment of time was captured and then, over the years, time passed the subjects by. Some are dead. Some are far [...]