Snapshot Photography - 9780262019293

Snapshots capture everyday occasions. Taken by amateur photographers with simplepoint-and-shoot cameras, snapshots often commemorate something that is private and personal; yetthey also reflect widely held cultural conventions. The poses may be formulaic, but a photograph ofloved ones can evoke a deep affective response. In Snapshot Photography,Catherine Zuromskis examines the development of a form of visual expression that is both public andprivate.

Scholars of art and culture tend to discount snapshot photography; it istoo ubiquitous, too unremarkable, too personal. Zuromskis argues for its significance. Snapshotphotographers, she contends, are not so much creating spontaneous records of their lives as they areparticipating in a prescriptive cultural ritual. A snapshot is not only a record of interpersonalintimacy but also a means of linking private symbols of domestic harmony to public ideas of socialconformity.

Through a series of case studies, Zuromskis explores the social lifeof snapshot photography in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century. Sheexamines the treatment of snapshot photography in the 2002 film One Hour Photoand in the television crime drama Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; thegrowing interest of collectors and museum curators in "vintage" snapshots; and the"snapshot aesthetic" of Andy Warhol and Nan Goldin. She finds that Warhol's photographs ofthe Factory community and Goldin's intense and intimate photographs of friends and family use theconventions of the snapshot to celebrate an alternate version of "family values."

In today's digital age, snapshot photography has become even more ubiquitous andephemeral -- and, significantly, more public. But buried within snapshot photography's mythicconstruction, Zuromskis argues, is a site of democratic possibility.