The Lost Tarot Deck - An Exquisite Medieval Themed 78-Card Tarot by Hans Bauer

The Lost Tarot is built on an arresting creative premise: what if a tarot deck had been created in the fifteenth century using a rudimentary camera, nearly four hundred years before photography was actually invented? Hans Bauer photographed performers and reenactors at Renaissance fairs in Texas over several years, capturing medieval figures including emperors, queens, knights, mages, and the common people of feudal England during the reign of Henry VIII. The images were then treated to look as if they had been made by such an imagined device, producing something that occupies an unusual space between historical artifact and modern art.

The primary locations for the photography were the Texas Renaissance Faire near Houston, the largest of its kind in the world, and the Sherwood Forest Faire near Austin. A small number of additional images were staged in Bauer's home studio. The result is a 78-card deck that is visually striking and genuinely unlike anything else in the tarot world.