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Art and the Snapshot
How the outcast got accepted
Snapshots are the lifeblood of photography. Without them, the industry would be a shadow of itself. Professional photographers might still be mixing chemicals and coating their own glass plates. The millions — actually billions — of snapshooters around the world are the economic force that propels the industry and art of photography forward.
But snapshots were an embarrassment to the early critical establishment.
For the thought leaders who championed photography as a fine art in its early years— Alfred Stieglitz, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Edward Steichen, and the rest — the lowly home photograph was beneath artistic consideration. They wanted photography to be like painting — deliberate, authored, and aesthetically serious.
But the snapshot couldn’t be ignored. It was not just an economic force — its middle- or even lowbrow aesthetic challenged what these elitists thought photography was all about. But little by little, that aesthetic made itself felt in “serious” photography, ultimately finding its place at the center of the photographic art of the 20th century and beyond.
Snapshooters can produce pictures that are indistinguishable from the works of art the establishment reveres. Artists like Elliott Erwitt, Marc Riboud, Jacques Henri Lartigue, and Henri Cartier-Bresson may be much more consistent photographic marksmen, but occasionally Joe Kodak makes a lucky shot and hits the target too.
