Photographer unknown
Perry Buck
INV-2198
Photographer unknownn.d.
Perry Buck
Photographer unknown →photographgelatin silver print
Date
n.d.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image: 4.5 × 3.5 cm (1 13/16 × 1 7/16 in.); Paper: 4.7 × 3.7 cm (1 7/8 × 1 1/2 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.
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