Is this you?

Ah, the power of the Web. One of the great things it does is allow people to connect across enormous distances on the thinnest of pretexts, or to find things and people they thought they had lost forever.

Which brings us to Is This You, a UK-based site that is nothing but a long line of scanned photos found on the street, in photo booths, and so forth, with the recurring question: "Is this you?"

If it is you, they have a mechanism for getting the lost photos back to you.

None of the photos are me, or anyone I recognize, but I love them for the same reason that I love buying other peoples' snapshots in antique stores: The stories they contain. How people look at each other, body language, and so forth are wonderfully tantalizing clues to their lives. Even better is finding more than one photo of the same person or from the same day. One photo may be fascinating, but two or three suddenly give us a much more well-rounded view of a person's personality from just a few subtle clues.

(all of this reminds me that I've been meaning to scan some of my found photo collection and put it on this site... I'll have to make a start on that this weekend)