Menswear. Womenswear. Youth. Kidswear. Found photographs. Flea market discoveries. Auction lots, e-Bay purchases, the fruits of classified WANTED ads. Each photo… a mystery. Girls dressed almost identically to their mothers. Boys, who look like thugs, juvenile delinquents. Children at play, period clothing, period toys. Men dressed as women. Women dressed as men. All, making eye contact with the camera, collected over the years by Paul Hartnett.

Click, a photo taken. Hello, look at us. Here we are, together. Momentary exuberance, pride perhaps, frozen in time long before the invention of the automobile, telephone, radio or airplane.

You may ask yourself, where was this photograph taken? And why? Who were they? What kind of life did they lead? Unidentified people in unspecified places at unspecified times, captured largely by anonymous photographers. Unknown sitters: intriguing. No longer in frames or albums that once cherished them, no longer within carefully hand-written letters that went through a slow postal system.

The photographs collected here by Paul Hartnett, were intended to be treasured by those they were made for, a small circle of friends and family, a certain coterie, or them alone. Sometimes, on the back of an image, there is a name with an age and a date, sometimes a telling communication, hastily written – occasionally somewhat provocatively. Sometimes a collectable stamp, an interesting postmark.

Many indulged their wildest fantasies with theatrical costumes and props in early, makeshift photographic studios. Subjects dressed as gun-toting cowboys, 'gents' in top hats 'n' tails, clowns.

'I'd never planned on becoming a collector, says Paul Hartnett. 'It began, as obsessions do, quite by chance, with a lucky find at a flea market. I pretended to appear disinterested as I shuffled through rubber-banded packs of menswear, womenswear, kidswear. One pack had been categorised into nothing but stained and dented studio shots of men in couples: soldiers, sailors, university students and 'theatrical types'. Whilst a large percentage of these men resembled each other as brothers might, many didn't. In the main their ages didn't seem quite different enough to indicate the blood connection of a father son relationship. More than just good friends? All became mine for a mere three pounds. An absolute bargain.'

'Most of the subjects were documented in the form of 'real-photo' black and white picture postcards, a format so popular at the start of the twentieth century. Brothers, sisters, best mates, lovers... whatever the relationships or our interpretation of them, someone somewhere had spent a lot of time and maybe money putting together this abandoned collection. It was a collection that I soon began to expand. With visits to flea markets and regular purchases at specialist photographic fairs on an international basis, the various categories began to swell but the emphasis was upon fashion, style, and what appeared to be special friendships.'

'I placed a series of often hilarious adverts in the monthly publication entitled Picture Postcard Monthly and suddenly I was inundated by dealers who sent me pack after pack of visuals on approval. I soon became totally addicted to the buzz of expanding the collection.'

'Rescued, enigmatic objects of abandonment, such as those collected here, represent a mysterious terrain which is so difficult to decode. Whether the men are cowboys cavorting at an all-male dance stag night in the US, or army buddies showing off in impromptu acrobatics beside a cooling lake, or women holding hands atop a garden fence, the easy camaraderie and uninhibited feelings communicate as intense. What is for sure is that these ambiguous artefacts, which through death or life's vagaries had endured, stimulate a wide variety of responses from viewers. What kinds of relationships do these scuffed, orphaned images truly depict? We, the viewers in another time, another world, are left guessing.'

'In terms of both Fashion and Social History, there is so much potential for such images and with new developments in technology, it's my hope that both this archive and my personal photographic work will soon find a platform beyond this fast-moving site that will be easy to access and of interest to many for years to come.'