Word: snapshots
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...snapshot was a movement away from Weston. Weston's genius and stylistic fulfillment was such that, like T.S. Eliot in modern poetry, his influence probably did more to stultify than to stimulate new development in photography. When the photographic reaction to Weston came, it was radical--where Weston's images were classically composed, the new snapshot photography has a haphazard look. Where Weston photographed close friends and nature, snapshooters concentrate on man in the urban landscape. Weston worked n almost total isolation from the influence of mass culture--the new wave of photography is highly conscious of the medium...
STRUCTURED AS AN extended essay on the relation between the amateur snapshot and the work of serious photographers. The Snap Shot also offers a wide view of the present state of photographic art. Included are works from established names, such as Robert Frank and Lee Freidlander and from the less well-known but increasingly important photographers such as Nancy Rexroth. Despite important differences in method and sensibility, all strive to snatch meaningful fragments of modern life. Quickly seen and quickly taken, the snapshot is a glimpse of a fast-moving society. It represents a new approach to reality in that...
Photography is foremost a window on the world. The photographer's two most creative decisions involve the framing of that window and the timing of the camera's shutter which permanently freezes the window's view. For the snapshot photographer, framing involves an attempt to capture a scene's ambience, rather than an attempt at strong composition. None of the photographers in The Snapshot crop their images; incongruities are as important as congruities. In one of the essays which stud the book, Tod Papageorge writes of his efforts to capture "superficialities." He wants to reveal truths not by grabbing moments...
...Papageorge similarly shows most of the people in his images intent on something other than himself. His photographs of seas of fans at a ball game, all intent upon the game, gives us a sneaky opportunity to examine the varieties of humanity without the danger of being observed. The snapshot style of photography is harshly unforgiving--its picture of humanity reveals all the tedious banality of everyday man. Every wrinkle, every paunch and every over-made-up face is starkly immortalized. When the snapshot does confront its subject, its look is electric. The nakedness with which people's eyes reveal...
...SNAPSHOT approach to photography here yields relaxed, unpretentious pictures but fails to produce photographs that have anything like the authority of complete statements. Dorfman is able at times to make a virtue of her lack of technical bravado and create images that are fresh and spontaneous but too often the pictures lack variety and psychological focus. We see everyone as if we were sitting across the table from them--they sit in some vague middle distance, not close enough for us to scrutinize them, not far enough away for us to see them as figures in an environment. And Dorfman...