Word: snapshots
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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...
...MOST OF the photographers in The Snapshot, time is fleeting and each image is an instantaneous moment within it. Gary Winogrand is a master of capturing the telling moment when human interaction is at its most explicit. Sometimes the result is too neat--one photograph is made by the simple gimmick of two men frozen in the similar act of pointing at the same unseen object. Others strike to the heart of interrelationships. One features the taut confrontation of mother and son on a city street. The kid's whining defiance and his mother's tired implorings cry out from...
...snapshot photographer's greatest fault is that in his obsession with the ordinary and commonplace, he often forgets that he must not only portray, but also reveal. To have impact, the photographer must reveal truths about everyday life that we don't normally recognize. Without such revelation, the images are flat, dull and lifeless. Bill Zulpo-Dane's photo-postcards are faithful portrayals of places he has visited, but as photographs, they are excruciatingly dull...
...snapshot's dominance of modern photography is probably near an end. Its confused reflection of a confused world was and is effective, but as the world changes, so must its art. In their very essence snapshots are temporary, only flashes of civilization, which feels constantly undermined by the rapidity of change. Still, certain commitments never change. Photographers will always share Emmet Gowin's commitment to visual truth: "For me, problem is always to find the shape of the gesture, the feeling of space, a light, which holds again a sense of touching reality...