Photos left behind in Apple stores make up a new art exhibit

Test out a phone or computer in any store, and you’ll find a handful of detritus left by other customers: gaming scores, crude sketches, and the inevitable photo snapped and then abandoned. In 2010, artist Irby Pace went through Apple stores in Texas and New York City gathering over a thousand such photographs, which he has now put together in an exhibit called Unintended Consequences. Although the subjects willingly chose to photograph themselves, Pace expects to see a “change in behavior for those people who have not considered how these images may be used.”

In many ways, the exhibit works because of the powerful, almost subconscious belief that sufficiently public places make one invisible. Whether on the internet or in a store, it’s easy to imagine that with so much information passing through a place, your own image or words will pass unnoticed. These photographs are still anonymous, and the subjects are clearly performing for someone, if only themselves. But by showcasing these discarded images, Unintended Consequences places them in a fundamentally different context.