Dad's Snapshots Unchained: Can Baby Boomers Embrace Their Fine Artist?
If you aren’t native to the digital age you likely have some boxes of family snapshots somewhere. Prints were processed at or through a local drugstore or photo kiosk. Maybe your entry into the world of fine art photography. But also maybe not. Your path is murky and laced with a acid-tongued critics, both professionals and poseurs.
Baby boomers embrace their fine artist when they recognize the parallel between family snapshots and the work of some very famous photographers. The masters and their curators find brilliance in the snapshot aesthetic.
Dad’s Snapshots must be here somewhere
Check in your attic, your closet, your shed or behind those five boxes of tax returns and check registers (remember them?). There’s a dusty box with the packing tape peeling off and it’s filled with possibilities. Dad’s snapshots want to be unchained, so baby boomers-embrace your fine artist self.
My father was an inveterate snapshooter. His Ansco Automatic Reflex F 3.5 twin lens was a frequent though rarely welcomed guest at family celebrations. He bought it in 1951, the year I was born.
Of four kids I was somehow delegated the job of family archivist, I’m sure I wasn’t present for the vote. I have over 1000 medium format transparencies of our family life in my front closet. It’s exciting and daunting to consider the creative possibilities there. If you were born before 1975 you probably also have a box of dog-eared snapshots and over-exposed transparencies.
Baby Boomer Fine Artists embrace the snapshot Aesthetic
Janet Malcolm, wrote a classic collection of essays on photography in 1997 called “Diana and Nikon.” Her text can act as our guide to snapshots existing on a higher plain. In her eponymous essay Malcolm celebrated the arrival of a new avant garde aesthetic in imagery-”deliberately artless photography” inspired by the common snapshot.
She illustrated her essay with work by Joel Meyerowitz, Robert Frank, Nancy Rexroth and G. Botsford. Fine art photography aficionados will recognize all but G. Botsford as familiar names. Malcolm surreptitiously included a family snapshot collected by her deceased husband, Gardner Botsford to prove/disprove her point about snapshots as art. Her artifice was never discovered except by a reviewer who failed miserably to distinguish professional from amateur.
Confusing the experts:are all snapshooters fine art photographers?
As an official baby boomer, I’ve unchained more than a few of my Dad’s snapshots but do these examples really rise to the level of the fine art referenced by Malcolm? Link
Feel free to join the fun: study Malcolm’s Botsford snapshot closely for similarities with the work of Frank and Meyerowitz or Nan Goldin, another artist who has embraced the snapshot aesthetic. See the point of view of the Botsford photo, the state of dress, the matching rackets and how the stripes of the court echo the white fence posts. These are the sorts of considerations a fine art photographer might consider shooting “snapshots” on the street.
Find an image in your collection: banal yet profound in its simplicity where the figures maybe don’t look directly at the camera. Something with a bit of drama, even staged. Your photo should announce itself as definitely amateur but somehow include an element of oddity or curiosity. Publish it as “Untitled” and credit your mother by first initial and maiden name only and date it “circa” some year in the 50’s or 60’s. Instant fame. Do the same with 20 more from your collection and sign your first book contract, so easy.
embrace your fine artist: the baby Boomer family snapshot how-to guide
If your family snapshot collection is dominated by black and white prints there are a variety of well known artists waiting to inspire you. Holly Roberts and Lisa Kokin come to mind. Holly Roberts' work is featured in the collections of several leading art museums including the Phoenix Art museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lisa Kokin’s work has been collected by the Yale University Art Museum and the Oakland Museum of California among others.
If you enjoy photo manipulation, Indiana University Northwest professor Jennifer Greenburg takes appropriation and family history to a whole new level. She characterizes her work as creating a new understanding about the historical depiction of women in vintage snapshots. Your local lab can digitize both black and white snapshot or slide transparencies for as little as three dollars apiece. Photoshop type software opens up all sorts of fun, sneaky and bizarre possibilities for your snapshot collection.
In the mid-1990 I used Polaroid film to transfer found snapshot transparencies to watercolor paper. It was a very arty effect, perhaps even fine art. See item #5 in my April 2024 blog post.
Dad’s snapshots chained allow baby boomers their fine artist self to arrive center stage. Mix in perseverance, creativity and most all, luck for best success. Or better-just have fun.