Anonymous stories, written on found photographs

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I'm absolutely fascinated by Ransom Riggs' ongoing series at mental_floss called Talking Pictures—themed collections of found photographs that happen to have writing on them. They're sort of the multimedia equivalent of those 25-word or 100-word ultra-short fiction stories. Usually, there's just enough written here to make each image more powerful, and leave you wanting to know more.

The current Talking Pictures theme: Hard Times. And nothing says "hard times" quite like a plague of locusts. Except, maybe, a couple of horses struck by lightning. Or a woman facing down the camera on the day she was laid off from work. Or a little girl with a split lip, trying to smile in front of a Christmas tree. All of which you can see in the Talking Pictures gallery.

This is why you should always caption your Flickr posts, people. Think of tomorrow's bloggers.