Photography’s Not Dead Yet (7/18/08)

Street Photography and the Snapshot Aesthetic

In a 1992 essay titled “Post-Photography,” Geoffrey Batchen drew an analogy between the historical relationship of painting and photography (the former haunting the latter) and the role of photography in the age of digital imaging (now it is photography that is doing the haunting). Post-photography adherents, Batchen wrote, “draw a distinction between photography as a direct inscription of a referent . . . and the photographic as a practice dependent on the recirculation of existing codes and images.”  (Stay with me– semiotics is your friend). In simpler terms, Photography’s death is inevitable, as the public’s faith in its truth telling abilities are increasingly diminished by the increasing ease and ubiquity of digital manipulation.

Removing oneself from unpleasant childhood memories is easy with programs like Photoshop. The problem is, I get students who enter beginning photojournalism classes thinking that this kind of manipulation is an acceptable practice.

Writing in 1994, Timothy Druckrey put another nail in the coffin of what is now classified by museums as traditional photography when he argued that as a formal and self-reflective model of expression, photography could “no longer serve the symbolic imperatives of this culture.” In laymen’s terms, Druckery was essentially saying that the medium had evolved into something beyond what it was originally intended to do.

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”  
* Mark Twain

Well into the twenty-first century, there are still two branches of photographic practice that we expect to serve undoctored, representational purposes. The first are the realist, or journalistic forms: reportage and documentary. The second is that veritable cockroach of the medium, the humble yet inexhaustible family snapshot, or as it is currently classified by collectors and others in the Artworld, vernacular photography. Each of these genres serves societal functions that are indispensable, hence their prospects for continued survival seem assured.

The general public, while growing increasingly skeptical in the age of digital manipulation, still looks for unaltered reality in news and documentary photography. A.D. Coleman calls this “responsive” photography: “The viewers’ engagement with these images usually involves a conscious interaction with the photographer’s sensibility. However, the photographer is still presumed not to interfere with the actual event.” 

The photographer is thought not to interfere with the actual event, but what really goes on just before or after the picture is taken? What is going on just outside the frame? Did photography ever tell the truth?

Likewise, vernacular photography– the family snapshot incarnation– is almost entirely based on the notion of honest representation. I would argue that it is for this reason that it remains the medium’s most democratic and functional genre. Sontag wrote that in an industrialized world where the nuclear family was becoming increasingly rare, the photo album functioned as a surrogate for the extended family. This remains true today, even as the traditional family photo album is in turn supplanted by the dissemination of images through electronic and digital means in an increasingly computer-dependent world. 

Street photography, with its slices of life, frozen moments both ironic and banal, sought out and arbitrary, is unequal parts documentary and vernacular. In the 1930s Walker Evans paid great attention to what he called an “American Vernacular,” meaning the iconographic signs and symbols that defined a culture. In Evans’ photographs, and in much of street photography, the mundane moment and object is given center stage, just as it often is in the family photo album. Leaving Evans static compositional style aside for the moment, lyrical street photography, like snapshots, readily forgives violations of standard conventions of composition and lighting.  We’re all familiar with the casual artlessness of the snapshot aesthetic. With its current appeal to collectors, my mother might be a genius in this regard– you never saw so many cut-off heads and backlit scenes. 

Julio the shoeshine man was usually gruff with me, until the day I brought him a copy of his photograph.

Another attractive feature of vernacular photography as an art form– the odd mixture of anonymity and sameness that holds our fascination —is also a key element in street photography. D. J. Waldie, in an essay written for the book published to accompany the Getty Museum’s “Close To Home: An American Album” exhibition of “found” snapshots, presented his belief that these images “are just uncanny: an American-brand surreality of domesticated weirdness plucked by the disembodied wit of modernity from the chaos of images we’ve made of ourselves.” With the small caveat of changing the adjective to undomesticated, the same could easily have been written of the best work of our celebrated street photographers. The main difference is small but significant—photographers in the street generally avoid social interaction, so as not to disrupt the natural flow of events. I usually abide by this myself, self-consciously taking the fly-on-the-wall approach, channeling the yin-yang of Frank and Winogrand. Still I find there are times when I do want to engage people socially; when I want them to know I am seeking some sort of approval, however tacit, to photograph them. Many times I’m asked why I’m out there with the camera. Upon hearing an explanation of my project and motives, most people are then willing to allow me to continue, especially when I tell them I will bring them a copy of their image.

Like the vernacular snapshots that have been recontextualized as Art, these environmental portraits serve two purposes. Aside from becoming part of a visual narrative, they are also appreciated as the type of photography their subjects are most comfortable with. As the months passed, the distribution of photographs to people on Broadway has become an increasingly important part of the process. There have been days when I walk the six blocks back and forth, with a stack of 4×6 prints in my camera bag, looking for familiar faces. In doing so, I risk losing the psychological distance street photographers use as a buffer, but for me the trade-off is worth it. Upon receiving their photographs, the reactions are always positive. Whether it’s an ice cream vendor, a security guard, John the homeless alcoholic, or the salesgirl in a jewelry store, they all seem to consider these photographs in much the same manner they might look at a snapshot taken by a friend or family member. Simply put, as a record of their existence, the way they are now, and the way they will always appear in that image.