What happens to the pictures of us? Nowadays they go straight to the Internet where anyone anywhere in the world can see them. And they’re nothing terribly special.

It wasn’t that way a hundred years ago, when getting your picture taken was a very important event. You dressed your best and you looked thoughtfully and for a long time into the awesome, magical lens of the camera. But even these important pictures sometimes were lost, sold by the photographer or even thrown away by families.

After many decades some of them found their way to flea-market tables in New York City, Rome, and Paris, where the artist Vladimir Radunsky couldn’t take his eyes off of them. He bought them, took them home, and looked at them over and over. Now he has chosen his favorites for this book and his friend Chris Raschka has written a poem for each one in an imagined alphabet of names and personalities.