– Sunday Poem: David Ignatow from Shadowing the Ground

“The World Is So Difficult to Give Up” is a long-term project I curate, composed entirely of photographs found in thrift stores. The original photographers and subjects remain unknown to me. Most of the images are portraits—faces caught in moments of emotion.

What fascinates me is that their former owners chose not to throw them away, but instead carried them to a second-hand store. Had these pictures lost their emotional significance? Or perhaps the emotions they contained became too overwhelming to keep? Whatever the reason, they were preserved rather than discarded.

The world, it seems, is indeed hard to give up. As unknowing observers, we can only speculate about the feelings behind each photograph—and in doing so, we inevitably project our own stories onto them.