Silhouettes

Silhouettes is Fred Cray's 2016 continuation of his long-running Unique Photographs project, in which mass-produced snapshots are altered into one-of-a-kind objects.

For this book, Cray ran 4 x 6 machine prints through a desktop printer a second time, layering silhouettes, and their photographic negatives, over his own photographs, found snapshots, and images of posters, graffiti, and murals. Published in a signed and numbered softcover edition, each copy comes with at least one unique inserted photograph, so that no two copies are identical.

Since 2008, Cray has scattered more than 26,000 individually altered photographs in public places worldwide as part of Unique Photographs, and his small-run books, including Cray Cray and Silhouettes, extend that project's interest in chance encounter and the single, irreproducible print into book form. His work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the George Eastman Museum, and the New York Public Library.