The Anonymous Project by Lee Shulman

The gray-blue Pontiac in the garage might be new. They may have saved for it a long time, or taken out a loan. The father may have been away on a business trip for a few days, coming home only the evening before. Or maybe they just wanted to take the family photo for the Christmas card. We don't know the story behind the image. What we know is that it shows a family of four, gathered somewhere in Texas — the car's license plate, at least, points that way — to be photographed. And yet, with the exception of one red-haired boy, nobody is actually looking at the camera. Everyone is doing their own thing. It is the kind of photograph that stops you. Who took it remains unknown. That is precisely the subject of No Place Like Home presented by The Anonymous Project, initiated by artist Lee Shulman, on view at Fotografiska Berlin from June 20 through November 1, 2026.

For No Place Like Home, he has chosen around 12,000 of these images and compressed them into an installation large enough to feel, quite literally, like a house you might have once lived in. Among the highlights are the so-called Totems: floor-to-ceiling, backlit structures composed of layer upon layer of photographs, which fill the completely darkened room with a warm, suffusing light. It is worth lingering. Something will always catch you. Maybe a quality of light or a glance. Or perhaps a thought: the people who once owned these photographs simply wanted to hold on to a moment. Shulman rescues those moments, but not for them. For the rest of us.