Random photos without context sought

August 28, 2012 5:50 AM

Help me find photos from a wide variety of sources without any context

Years ago, someone used their minor scripting abilities and an ethical blind eye to collect found photos (http://foundphotos.net). I found it fascinating to be confronted with photos without any surrounding context, and with no selection for artistry, content, or value. They were also global, which is important. One of the first interesting things to ask oneself is "which continent is this on". Then the fun starts: examining electrical outlets, advertisements, plastic cutlery, etc for clues.

That site hasn't been updated for years. Something similar is available for photos posted to LiveJournal (http://fuzzysquid.com/LJ.php), but these are almost all of Russian origin, which is fine, but limited. Also, because they are being posted, they have been selected as view-worthy.

So do you know of any other sources of context-free images, with bonus points for global coverage and extra super bonus points for avoiding pre-selection based on quality. I want them bad and random.

posted by stonepharisee to media & arts (4 answers total)

I should mention the LJ link above is potentially NSFW. THe first link is filtered for such content.
posted by stonepharisee at 5:56 AM on August 28, 2012

There's the Random personal photo finder (potentially NSFW), which does searches for common camera filename sequences.
posted by brentajones at 6:02 AM on August 28, 2012 [2 favorites]

Internet k hole. May be very NSFW.
posted by capnsue at 6:43 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Try Wikimedia Commons... click Random File.

It meets all your criteria.
posted by ecorrocio at 7:26 AM on August 28, 2012