The snapshot as an art form

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Stephen S. Mack

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Before I start on my opinions about the snapshot, I was wondering if there are any similar discussions in the archives. (I think that the snapshot *is* a legitimate art form,):eek: but I was wondering what had been written about it before on these forums.

Thanks to all who reply.

With best regards,

Stephen S. Mack
 
I havent seen anything but I like the idea. Im in the process of taking occasional "snapshots" replete with a heavy dose of flash -- not from my Leica but from my p/s digicam.
 
I don't know if it has been written about here, but a few years ago I saw two large exhibitions - one at San Diego's MoPA, and the other in LA's Getty, which featured many snapshots. One was arranged by subject, and the other chronologically. Both featured many anonymous photographers. Somebody thinks they are art!
 
My only answer is the Eggleston quote I pull out all the time:

William Eggleston said:
I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify. They don't care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the centre.

Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don't get it. They respect their work because they are told by respectable institutions that they are important artists, but what they really want to see is a picture with a figure or an object in the middle of it. They want something obvious.

The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word 'snapshot'. Ignorance can always be covered by 'snapshot'. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious.
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Anything can be an art form. It only depends on the intent of the person doing/creating it.
 
That's an interesting quote, mhv.

Lately, I've been more inclined to have a obvious subject in my photos and put it in the middle (sorry Mr. Eggleston). I like photos that don't really call attention to themselves as photos but are about the people, things and places they depict. For that reason, I also stay away from black and white film, ultra-wide angle lenses, bokeh shots, etc.

Which is tot to say that I necessarily dislike photos with those features. It's just not what I'm interested in doing at the moment.
 
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Aperture published a book called "The Snapshot" in 1974. Here are a couple of quotes from it:

Paul Strand "I have always taken the position that the word snapshot doesn't really mean anything. To talk about it you almost have to begin by asking: When is a snapshot not a snapshot? When is a photograph not a snapshot?"

Lee Friedlander "The idea that the snapshot would be thought of as a cult or movement is very tiresome to me and, I'm sure, confusing to others....The pleasures of good photographs are the pleasures of good photographs, whatever the particulars of their makeup".
 
Andrew Sowerby said:
That's an interesting quote, mhv.

Lately, I've been more inclined to have a obvious subject in my photos and put it in the middle (sorry Mr. Eggleston). I like photos that don't really call attention to themselves as photos but are about the people, things and places they depict. For that reason, I also stay away from black and white film, ultra-wide angle lenses, bokeh shots, etc.

Which is tot to say that I necessarily dislike photos with those features. It's just not what I'm interested in doing at the moment.
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that's all well and good, but with all due respect, so what?

Do you really want us all to think you simply hold up your P&S and press the button when Pavlov's bell goes off? How do you even decide to take a picture?

I think we all get tired of pretentiousness. But when you start trying to brag about how unpretentious you are, you've gone overboard.

I guess that at some point, if I can't tell what the subject is then the photographer failed. And if the photographer feels they need to circle and underline the subject as well as title the shot for me, then perhaps I am looking at the work of a moron who needs that kind of explicit direction themselves. :)

Or, it's simply, "This is my new car/dog/house/etc." and not a shot intended for artistic consideration. And if I don't know the shooter, I'm not going to waste my time when they didn't invest any of theirs in the taking.
 
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I'm a bit lazy so this is cut and pasted from wikipedia:

In 1908, the Austrian architectural critic Joseph August Lux wrote a book called Künstlerische Kodakgeheimnisse (Artistic Secrets of the Kodak) in which he championed the use of the camera for its cultural potential. Guided by a position that was influenced by the Catholic critique of modernity, he argued that the accessibility the camera provided for the amateur meant that people could photograph and document their surroundings and thus produce a type of stability in the ebb and flow of the modern world

I remember it being in 'Das neue Kunstgewerbe in Deutschland' rather than a book on its own but I could well be wrong. Im not sure if there's an English translation though there are a few articles that discuss it in English (one is referenced on the Wikipedia page). Its probably the earliest discussion of snapshot photography (it's not very clear from the title but he is specifically writing about casual snapshots of family life etc. rather than studio based/posed photography).
 
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"To say that it looks like a snapshot needs a little refinement...I wanted them to look like the best snapshots. I printed them as snapshots, but with many snapshots there's a lot of visual convention. It's only every now and then we find a snapshot that has that quality of being free and spontaneous, and that's what I was after." --Stephen Shore.
 
The term you're all groping towards is 'vernacular' photography, which is a bit more useful, since the term 'snapshot' is overloaded and emotionally-charged now, both amongst the intelligentsia and the plebes. I am actually rather fond of the British term, 'happy snaps'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular_photography

From my point of view, I admit to being rather confused as to what art is, anyway. So the concept of the vernacular photograph as art doesn't rattle my cage too much. Call it art, call it not-art, either is fine with me. I like vernacular photography, especially that of the USA. The one thing that it is not, which art normally is, is intentional (generally). Vernacular photography is by its nature a work product, not an art product. It is not intended, in the general sense, to be viewed as art, to be discovered as art, to be appreciated as art - not even family vacation photos of the Grand Canyon or the Stuckey's on Route 66 in New Mexico.

However, over time, vernacular photographs can come to have different meanings, and some of them approach or circle around the term 'art'. A social and historical document, they have meaning as statements of their zeitgeist, the frozen moment of bell-bottoms and platform shoes or post-WWII suburban growth, perhaps. An unvarnished look at who we are or who we were, it is unpretentious and unambiguous, even if we find some aspects to be laughable in a culture that never saw kids take vacations to visit 'dude ranches'.

Yes, I like snapshots, and sure, they're art - to me, at least. But I'm a Ruralist, so what do you expect?


 
HCB referred to his "snapshots" and the Leica as a "snapshot camera." I always though that was peculiar but that is the way HCB referred to his work.
 
Personally, I see a difference between quck shots and 'snapshots,' although both are generally taken quickly. My personal definition of snapshot is 'a photograph that is taken quickly with the only regard to composition being the inclusion of the predominant element inside the picture plane." In other words, no thought is given to composition other than "I want to take a shot of this group of friends," for example. A shot can certainly be taken quite rapidly with more thought to composition involved, and I wouldn't consider that a snapshot. I, personally, don't consider snapshots 'art,' just like I don't consider the painting of a wall with white paint art. The snapshot is taken from a perspective of utility, just as the painting of a wall is done from a perspective of utility. Taking a quick shot while considering composition is more artistic, in my opinion. Could the line be blurred between the two? Certainly. I may be speaking in generalities, but I am not speaking in absolutes.
 
Andrew Sowerby said:
That's an interesting quote, mhv.

Lately, I've been more inclined to have a obvious subject in my photos and put it in the middle (sorry Mr. Eggleston).
Which is tot to say that I necessarily dislike photos with those features. It's just not what I'm interested in doing at the moment.


3689368489_930e04ff25.jpg


3553024880_ef6fce0edd.jpg
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Sorry, but these are good photos with the 'subject' being well placed and meaningful, IMHO.:)
 
Merkin said:
My personal definition of snapshot is 'a photograph that is taken quickly with the only regard to composition being the inclusion of the predominant element inside the picture plane." In other words, no thought is given to composition other than "I want to take a shot of this group of friends," for example.
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I'm not trying to pick a fight, or anything, but I do wonder about the utility of that definition. I don't think I ever take a photo without some regard to composition. Whenever I bring camera to eye I'm pretty sure that consciously or unconsciously I'm thinking on how I can make a "decent photo" (whatever that means) of the scene in front of me. Even when taking the most "snapshotty" of photographs.

Here's one that I took at a birthday BBQ for some friends' son last December, selected because its the only "family snap" shot I can think of that I have online (used as an illustration in a write-up I did on a new DSLR):



While hardly "art" or the best-composed photo that's ever been made, I do recall that I thought, albiet very casually, about how how I might go about taking the photo: making decisions about where to stand, what focal length and aperture to set and timing the shutter release to have the three people in frame "all in a row".

I also wonder whether intent is the best guide to deciding "what sort of photo" a photograph may be. Shouldn't the photo itself (or, perhaps for some, its position or inclusion in a sequence of photos) determine that, rather than the stated or imputed intent of the photographer?

It's all a funny business really. I have a couple of photos taken during a trip which I think are strong enough to "stand alone" as photos in themselves. Does that mean they aren't the happy-snap travel photos they "really were" taken as?

...Mike
 
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