When American tourist Tom Sponheim bought a stack of photo negatives for $3.50 in a flea market in Barcelona back in 2001, he probably wasn’t expecting to find the secret work of a master photographer hidden inside them. But that’s exactly what he found when he returned home and developed them, because as you can see below, the pictures he discovered are nothing short of stunning.
Keen to learn more about the mysterious person behind the lens, Sponheim set up a Facebook page in 2010. On it he hosted the images he’d developed and bought ads targeting photography enthusiasts in Barcelona. Despite the page’s popularity however, and despite various people identifying themselves or friends in the photographs, the identity of the photographer remained unknown until Begoña Fernández stumbled upon the page in 2017. Awed by the beauty of the pictures, she set upon a fervent quest to get to the bottom of the mystery.
