“Amateur photography”

An amateur photographer is someone who has taken note of professional standards in photography and is to some extent emulating them. Snapshot cameras were invented in order to allow people to forget about photography and just take pictures, but an amateur photographer is very much interested in photography. Amateur photography is an aspirational endeavor; snapshot photography is the creation of those familiar small objects that most people or their parents have several generations’ worth of in albums or drawers or closets or storage lockers. So amateur photography is best defined in terms of intention (some semblance of professionalism), whereas snapshot photography is best defined in terms of equipment (snapshot cameras, maybe snapshot labs). They ought to be able to overlap, shouldn’t they? And in fact it’s easy to imagine a hobbyist or wannabe of some sort employing the cheapest equipment and materials to try to do something like what professionals do. An “amateur photographer” might use a snapshot camera out of economic desperation, in ignorance, as an experiment, etc. But the results will be very difficult to recognize for what they are, because it’s usually hard to make out intention through the scrim of uncontrollable contingency and poor technical standards that is snapshot photography. In this example the scene seems carefully staged, though I detect no whiff of artiness (the badge of one kind of amateur photographer). I have no idea what these people were up to, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they wished they could have achieved results to a better technical standard. I’ve said that all snapshots are mysterious to one degree or another. In examples like this, the mystery of intention runs as deep as it can go. Could it be that this is a sub-amateur photo—not just a would-be professional photo but a would-be would-be professional photo, a snapshot only because something better wasn’t possible?

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