Photographer unknown
The Big Six: McCoo, Graham, Nunnally, Polk, Nixon, and Collins
INV-2197
Photographer unknown1920/50
The Big Six: McCoo, Graham, Nunnally, Polk, Nixon, and Collins
Photographer unknown →photographgelatin silver print
Date
1920/50
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image: 11.4 × 7.5 cm (4 1/2 × 3 in.); Paper: 13.9 × 8.9 cm (5 1/2 × 3 9/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Peter J. Cohen
After George Eastman introduced the handheld Kodak #1 camera in 1888, amateurs made millions of snapshots depicting friends and family, travels, and festive occasions such as weddings. Even while solidifying such thoroughly conventional behaviors, amateur photography developed a new pictorial language that privileged immediacy, spontaneity, and accident. Career photographers and art historians—but also antiques vendors and flea-market shoppers—have long recognized the value of the “snapshot aesthetic.” The rise of social media and smartphones in recent years has effectively ended the era of the snapshot as both a printed photograph and an image for a private audience.
Also notable
Works in the same vein
