I was riding my bike through Brooklyn a few weeks ago when I saw what looked like at least a hundred slide transparencies scattered across Bergen Street, from the sidewalk into the bicycle lane. I immediately circled back to take a closer look.

My family has an immense collection of family photos in slide-form: musty smelling boxes and projector carousels, already loaded with slides in an image sequence dating back half a century. When I go back to Kansas for the holidays, I sometimes convince my parents to pull out one of those carousels for a quick slideshow. Images of old apartments, college girlfriends, hiking trips, and younger versions of themselves flash by with the satisfyingly mechanical sound and smell of the hot projector. Though I know the photographers behind those images, they might as well be found slides, as everything in those slides was taken well before my existence.

This personal connection made the sight of the discarded slides all the more shocking. I felt guilty scooping up as many as I could. Looking over my shoulder, I wasn’t sure if I had just taken someone’s art, family history, garbage, or all of the above.