GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME IN PEACE by Joel Rotenberg

It would be easy to think that snapshot photography is just professional photography dumbed way down for mass consumption. Its crudity is in fact pretty striking. The equipment is relatively crummy, and the pictures are taken relatively casually. So maybe snapshots are what you get if you take some desirable qualities away from professional photos.

That’s wrong, though. Snapshot photography is a form of its own. It has some things that professional photography doesn’t have. That’s because, casual and crummy as they may be, snapshots are taken for their own reasons and on their own occasions. Their approach to the world is different, not somehow inferior.

For example, snapshots permit a subjectivity that’s completely out of bounds for regular documentary photography. A snapshooter does not feel the documentarian’s quasi-scientific responsibility to show the world as it is, an objective world that doesn’t have the camera itself stirring up trouble in it. The reason is that the snapshooter doesn’t try to be outside anything. The snapshooter is someone immersed in life who just happens to be carrying a camera. The documentarian is a looker; the snapshooter is a liver. The documentary photographer records an event; the snapshooter is part of it. For the snapshooter, the taking of the picture is probably inseparable from a real-life relationship. So to say that you can’t intrude on others with your snapshot camera would amount to saying that you can’t intrude on others. It’s not nice, perhaps, but you can do it.

A documentary photographer can’t do it. Photos like these are very rare in straight photography.

Joel Rotenberg

The Art of the Snapshot? 

COLLECTING CYANOTYPES

 

There is something wonderfully appealing about cyanotypes.  The images produced usually are very crisp and clear, but care should be taken in handling the prints as the paper used for making the images is delicate.  Almost anyone can make cyanotypes and the process continues to this day being used by photographers and artists.  There is surprisingly very little scholarly literature on the subject and no general survey exists on the historical usage and range of the medium in photography.  In addition, there has been no major museum show on the cyanotype.

I include here an excerpt from Wikipedia which is a fascinating account of its origin and early usage:

“The English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel discovered this procedure in 1842. Though the process was developed by Herschel, he considered it as mainly a means of reproducing notes and diagrams, as in blueprints. It was Anna Atkins who brought this to photography. She created a limited series of cyanotype books that documented ferns and other plant life from her extensive seaweed collection. Atkins placed specimens directly onto coated paper, allowing the action of light to create a silhouette effect. By using this photogram process, Anna Atkins is regarded as the first female photographer.”

What you will see in the contributions from your fellow collectors below is how varied the subject matter is within this rather neglected medium.  If one wanted to collect an area of photography which is both beautiful and ripe for scholarly attention, one could do worse than to concentrate on the humble cyanotype.

Robert E. Jackson

For more information on any  of the contributors below, please click here.

The next group blog will be on spiders, bugs and other insects.  Got a good photos?   Shoot me a line.

 

Robert E. Jackson

Erin Waters

 Thomas Harris

Contemporary cyanotype by Jefferson Hayman

Jim Radke

Sabine Ocker

Pat Street

Joel Rotenberg

John Van Noate 

 

Jim Hanelius

Mark Glovsky

 Robert Young

David Chow

GUNS & SNAPSHOTS

Guns fascinate people. As an object that typifies America, they are up there with cars, TV sets, and cell phones.  They are an integral feature of noir films, and play a major role in movie Westerns.  In snapshots they can be evocatively displayed as a piece of sculpture, be scary toys, seen as emblems of macho behavior by soldiers, and are proudly displayed in many hunting scenes.  After the cloying sweetness of Valentine’s Day, it is time to get back to reality, so here are some amazing examples of gun photos as brought to you by fellow snapshot collectors.  You can find biographies of the collectors contributing photos here.

Clare Goldsmith

Erin Waters

Jim Hanelius

John Foster

Mark Glovsky

Tom Deupree

 Robert E. Jackson

Mark Rotenberg

Pat Street

Mark Sullo

John Van Noate

Marianne Clancy

 Joel Rotenberg

 John Toohey

 

Robert Young

 

Sabine Ocker

Philip Storey

 

Nigel Maister

Jim Radke