Taste in snapshots; rarity

Until now I have spoken of snapshots as if they were mere phenomena, artifacts with certain attributes, like archaeological specimens. Well, snapshots do have “certain attributes,” but in the end that’s not really the point. For me there are snapshots that matter and snapshots that don’t matter. I am not an academic. I want a picture that pleases me, that I can actually enjoy. Other collectors will have their own pleasures, their own specialties. But no matter what our taste is, the vast, unedited pool of snapshots viewed as mere phenomena will contain very little that satisfies it. I don’t want to say that all tastes are predictable or even imaginable. Nevertheless: almost always, a snapshot is, by any standards, a boring view of a banal subject, with truly nothing else going for it in visual terms. The difference between snapshots considered aesthetically and snapshots considered academically is just the difference between found photos and what is now known as “vernacular photography”; I'll come back to this later. Depending on where we enter the snapshot economy, we may or may not have an accurate idea of just how unusual a snapshot with a spark of aesthetic interest really is, never mind one that aligns with our own taste. Snapshots that might matter to us become increasingly concentrated (and increasingly expensive) as we move up the supply chain from picker to über-picker to dealer to über-dealer. But at the bottom of the chain the truth is inescapable to any reasonably directed collector: there are very many snapshots, but very few that matter. If a snapshot is made up of a subject and a view of it—again, I would say “treatment” if that didn’t imply someone doing the treating—it’s the view that is partly out of the control of the snapshooter. And that lack of control is usually what creates the appeal of the view. The effect would not be large if there were not so many snapshots: a problem with framing or focus or development or anything else in the snapshot process will probably just further degrade an already low-grade photo. But by any reckoning the number of snapshots is very great, certainly in the many billions (though a high percentage of them will never find their way into the “snapshot economy,” will never have a chance to be seen as anything but family photos). So the number of felicitous accidents becomes non-negligible, though still very small. I find this a wonderful picture. To me it is about unease: that is what I read in the majestic awkwardness of this Harold Lloyd–like everyman in (what are probably) his new clothes and (what is probably) his new suburb. It’s not actually “about” that, of course. It just seems to be, because of a piece of luck. I chose this example because the subject is as banal as could be. And this is a boring view of it, except for one tiny, tiny respect. The camera caught this young man at a fortunate instant, when, perhaps, he hadn’t yet completely settled himself for the shot. And if we care to look at this photo the way we look at an entirely intentional photo, we are automatically inclined to generalize: to apprehend his unsettled state metaphorically. If we imagine the stream of shutter-speed-length instants that went by while the snapshooter was holding the camera but before and after the shutter actually snapped, we can begin to see how unlikely this shot is. I’ve often seen photos of people in their yards, but never one that let me misinterpret it the way I have to misinterpret this one. Can something so thoroughly banal be called a freak? This photo is a banal freak. The same could be said of most snapshots that manage to be enjoyable as photos.

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