A Found Photo

LOOK AT ME, A COLLECTION OF FOUND PHOTOS

2008-05-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me this link to a great vernacular photography website.

http://www.moderna.org/lookatme/

Other People's Pictures in NYC & on Doc Channel

2008-05-06T14:06:00.001-07:00

We're happy to announce that Other People's Pictures will be broadcast on the Documentary Channel in May. For more details, go to the Documentary Channel's website. http://www.documentarychannel.com/main/index_new.php

Also, the film will be screened in New York City at the Jefferson Market branch of the NYC Public Library, as part of their Monday night screening series. This screening will happen on Monday, May 12th at 6:00 PM.
http://www.nypl.org/branch/local/man/jmr.cfm

NYC-based snapshot devotees may also be interested in a talk that is happening at the Jefferson Market library on the following Saturday, May 17th, at 2:00 PM. Nakki Goranin will discuss her new book, American Photobooth. http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/winter08/033076.htm

Please tell your friends.

A NEW BOOK...

2008-04-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

Näkki Goranin

American Photobooth

Foreword by David Haberstich

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

A fascinating history of an American institution that includes an extraordinary collection of photobooth images.

“That a perceptive, dedicated, and sensitive artist like Näkki Goranin has rescued from oblivion so many amazing self-portraits created by amateurs confronting themselves in the fleeting privacy of humble photobooths is yet another miracle for which we can be grateful.”—from the foreword by David Haberstich

Generally relegated to the realm of kitsch, the history and cultural importance of the photobooth has long been overlooked. Here, Näkki Goranin documents the invention, technological evolution, and commercial history of the photobooth with extensive illustrations culled from twenty-five years of collecting. Complementing this history is a powerful collection of heartbreaking, funny, and absolutely beautiful photobooth images. These often solitary figures—seeking freedom, confession, a thrill—are evocative of a lost time and place. Haberstich writes, “For anyone who assumes that photobooth pictures are perfunctory, utilitarian records at best, the range of emotions and moods portrayed by the subjects of [this] collection is a revelation.”

BLOGS THAT I'VE STUMBLED ONTO...

2008-03-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

While searching through Google and other search engines in search of related vernacular site, dealers and bloggers and stumbled across these listed below.

To check our other blogs that we have listed previously, browse through our previous posts.

These are new ones we came across and feel that there worth giving a look at, and if anyone has any further suggestions or additional blogs, please feel free to post them.

Thanks and enjoy

Blogs:
Vernacular Photography

(http://www.squidoo.com/vernacularphoto)

Random Camera Blog (http://randomphoto.blogspot.com/2007/09/vernacular-photography.html)

I SHOOT FILM

Ephemera

(http://ephemera.typepad.com/ephemera/2008/04/vernacular-phot.html)

Lost and Found Photos.com

(http://photosdie.typepad.com/lostandfoundblog/

Lost and Found Photos

(http://photosdie.typepad.com/)

Swapatorium: A Journey Through Junkland

(http://swapatorium.typepad.com/)

Vernacular Photography Enthusiast (http://www.squidoo.com/VernacularPhotography)

Other People's Pictures

2008-03-19T15:55:00.001-07:00

Article on NPR.ORG: All things considered. (June 2004)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1964382

At New York's Chelsea Flea Market, collectors sort through boxes and albums full of discarded snapshots: a black-and-white photo of a yawning girl, a Polaroid of a couple embracing at the kitchen table, a yellowed print of a group of Nazis smiling in the snow. Kaleidoscopic slices of life, these abandoned photos can sometimes bring in hundreds of dollars a piece.

Other People's Pictures, a new documentary from filmmakers Lorca Shepperd and Cabot Philbrick, examines the lives and minds of nine people who collect these lost and discarded photographs. One man searches only for "male affection" snapshots of men embracing or holding hands. Another looks for pictures that simply tell an unfinished story. An Israeli immigrant who lost family members in the Holocaust and whose own family album was destroyed years ago, owns what he calls a "banality of evil" collection: photos of Nazis in everyday situations.

NPR's Andrea Seabrook speaks to Shepperd and Philbrick about their film and the people obsessed with the snapshots of strangers.

76 Kisses

2008-03-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

76 Kisses at the City Reliquary Museum & Civic Organization
Snapshots from the collection of Lori Becker and David E. Brown
February 1 - March 30

http://cityreliquary.org/news/archives/000473.shtml

The City Reliquary presents a Valentine of Kisses

A soldier’s parting kiss, a summer kiss at a picnic, a midnight kiss on New Year’s Eve, a lusty kiss not meant to be seen. Luckily, a camera was present to capture all of them.

76 KISSES, an exhibition of snapshots at The City Reliquary, presents an intimate and compelling look at the kiss. Just in time for Valentine’s Day!

The carefully selected vintage photographs comprise a catalog of the kiss. Each photo captures some essential quality of love and affection—the unguarded moment when two people, overcome with emotion, find their lips meeting another’s.

The photos span a full century, from a risqué and intimate smooch in a Victorian parlor to a 1990s Polaroid of a New York couple at a dance, with its super-saturated color and long embrace the very opposite of the 19th century image. The core of the collection are snapshots from the 1930s through the 1960s, widely considered the Golden Age of the American snapshot. 76 KISSES showcases the inventive, intuitive, and surprising explosion of creativity that small cameras and fast film brought.

The photographs in 76 KISSES come from Lori Baker and David E. Brown’s collection of more than 200 vintage snapshots of kisses. They have been culled from flea markets, junk shops, photo albums, yard sales, eBay, and chance finds. Baker and Brown estimate that they have looked at approximately 800,000 photographs in the search of these pictures.

Vernacular photography–that is, snapshots–has become the newest and most democratic frontier of photography collecting. Thousands of people have found art, beauty, and meaning amid billions of discarded snapshots. Vernacular photographs have been the subject of several major exhibitions, including the National Gallery’s “The Art of the American Snapshot” (opening at the Amon Carter Museum on February 16), Thomas Walther’s “Other Pictures” at the Metropolitan Museum, and “Snapshots” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Snapshots and their collectors have been the subject of an award-winning documentary (Other People’s Pictures) and created numerous books, including Babette Hines’s Photobooth and Mark Michaelson’s Least Wanted.

76 KISSES is on view at the City Reliquary from February 1 to March 31, 2008. The opening reception is Friday, February 8, from 7 to 9 pm. The City Reliquary is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12 pm to 6 pm and by appointment.

Now is Then

2008-03-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

NOW IS THEN at the Newark Museum
Snapshots from the Maresca Collection
February 13 - May 11, 2008

http://www.newarkmuseum.org/

View vintage images from America’s golden age of snapshot photography.
From early portraits to contemporary voyeurism, the 150 works in this exciting exhibition chart the evolution of snapshot art and form an extraordinary document of American life in the first half of the 20th century.

"Polaroid abandons instant photography"

2008-03-01T12:48:00.000-08:00

NY Times Article, Feb. 8, 2008

It was a wonder in its time: A camera that spat out photos that developed themselves in a few minutes as you watched. You got to see them where and when you took them, not a week later when the prints came back from the drugstore.

But in a day when nearly every cellphone has a digital camera in it, “instant” photography long ago stopped being instant enough for most people. So today, the inevitable end of an era came: Polaroid is getting out of the Polaroid business.

The company, which stopped making instant cameras for consumers a year ago and for commercial use a year before that, said today that as soon as it had enough instant film manufactured to last it through 2009, it would stop making that, too. Three plants that make large-format instant film will close by the end of the quarter, and two that make consumer film packets will be shut by the end of the year, Bloomberg News reports.

The company, which will concentrate on digital cameras and printers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001 and was acquired by a private investment company in 2005. It started in 1937 making polarized lenses for scientific and military applications, and introduced its first instant camera in 1948.

The Lede remembers fondly how magical it was to watch the image gradually manifest itself from the chemical murk right there in your hand. But truth be told, the Lede’s own scuffed Polaroid SX-70 camera, which used to get regular use in all manner of situations, from producing a quick step-by-step primer on how to do the Ickey Shuffle to documenting a problem with a house he was buying that cropped up the day before the closing, hasn’t come out of its cabinet drawer in years.

Loyal users take heart, though — Polaroid said it would happily license the technology to other manufacturers should they want to go on supplying the niche market with film after 2009.

BOOKS BOOKS AND BOOKS

2008-02-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Here we go... our favorite books about Vernacular Photos and Found Snapshots, in alphabetical order. If there's a book you love and that we didn't list, let us know!

- Americans in Kodachrome. Guy Stricherz. Publ: Twin Palms
- American Photobooth. Nakki Goranin. Publ: W.W.Norton
- Anonymous: Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers. Robert Flynn Johnson. Publ: Thames and Hudson
- Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums. Barbara Levine, Kirsten Jensen. Publ: Princeton Architectural Press
- Close to Home: An American Album. J.D.Waldie. Publ: Getty Trust Publications
- Found Polaroids. Jason Bitner, Tod Lippy. Publ: Quack!Media.
- Funny Pictures: Snapshot Collection. Christian Skrein, Bodo von Dewitz. Publ: Hatje Cantz
- God Bless Americana. Charles Phoenix. Publ: Graphic Arts Center
- Now is Then: Snapshots from the Maresca Collection. Marvin Heiferman. Publ: Princeton Architectural Press
- Other Pictures: Anonymous Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection. Publ: Twin Palms
- Photo Trouvee. Michel Frizot, Cedric de Veigy. Publ: Phaidon
- Photobooth. Babbette Hines. Publ: Princeton Archirectural Press
- Snapshot Chronicles: Inventing the American Photo Album. Stephanie Snyder. Publ: Princeton Architectural Press
- Snaphots, The Eye of the Century. Carl Aigner, Vince Aletti, Peter Noever, Christian Skrein. Publ: Hatje Cantz.
- Strange and Singular. Michael Abrams. Publ: Loosestrife Editions
- The Art of the American Snapshot: 1888-1978. Publ: Princeton University Press
- The Book of Shadows. Jeffrey Fraenkel. Publ: D.A.P/Jeffrey Fraenkel
- Traffic: Snapshot Collection. Christian Skrein, Bodo von Dewitz. Publ: Hatje Cantz

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS IN THE USA

2008-02-28T11:43:00.001-08:00

The trend of collecting found photographs is spreading, and the museums and galleries are catching the virus. Below is a list of current exhibitions that are not to be missed.

The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978: From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson.
Amon Carter Museum, Fortworth, TX: February 16–April 27, 2008
With the advent of George Eastman’s Kodak camera and roll film in 1888, photography became an everyday aspect of modern life. Trace the history of the snapshot in America, from the late nineteenth century up to the 1970s, in this special exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art.
http://www.cartermuseum.org/exhibitions/the-art-of-the-american-snapshot-1888-1978-from-the-collection-of-robert-e-jackson

Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art
Internation Center of Photography, New York, NY: January 18 - May 4, 2008
Organized by renowned scholar and ICP Adjunct Curator Okwui Enwezor, Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art will present works by leading contemporary artists who use archival documents to rethink the meaning of identity, history, memory, and loss. Over the past thirty years, successive generations have taken wide-ranging approaches to the photographic and filmic archive. The works presented here take many forms, including physical archives arranged by peculiar cataloguing methods, imagined biographies of fictitious persons, collections of found and anonymous photographs, film versions of photographic albums, and photomontages composed of historical photographs. These images have a wide-ranging subject matter yet are linked by the artists' shared meditation on photography and film as the quintessential media of the archive.
http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.3639335/

The American Typologies by Pine & Woods
D3Projects Gallery, Santa Monica, CA: January 5 - March 6, 2008
Pine & Woods have been collaborating on this body of work for eight years. Inspired by Bernd and Hilla Becher, they have rigorously focused on collecting anonymous snapshots with particular themes in order to compose portraits of American culture.
http://d3projects.net/exhibits/the_american_typologies_by_pine_woods_jan_5_feb_23_2008_13

Les Femmes Aux Cigarettes
The Found Photo Gallery, Los Angeles, CA: Starts March 1st, 2008
http://www.thefoundphoto.com/

Disfarmer
Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, CA: January 12 - March 1, 2008
Plucked from obscurity by a dedicated team of researchers, the humble studio portraits of Mike Disfarmer, an eccentric small town photographer from Herber Springs, Arkansas, stand as inadvertent elegies for working Americans from the Depression Era through the turbulence of World War II. At a time of great economic and personal struggles, Disfamer captured with great eloquence and honesty, the reality of the American condition, and its effect on its small town citizens from a rural farming community.
http://www.rosegallery.net/now_showing/index.html

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Rock and Roll images

2008-02-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

We are looking into buying and displaying found photographs about garage bands, people playing electric guitar, wannabe rockstars, groupies, local bands.... anything related to rock and roll!

Send us by email a visual of the photos you have.... they might end up in a great gallery exhibition.

DEFINITION: Vernacular Photography

2008-02-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

Vernacular photography refers to the creation of photographs by amateur or unknown photographers who take everyday life and common things as subjects. Though the more commonly known definition of the word vernacular is a quality of being "indigenous" or "native", the use of the word in relation to art and architecture refers more to the meaning of the following sub-definition (of vernacular architecture) from The Oxford English Dictionary: "concerned with ordinary domestic and functional buildings rather than the essentially monumental". Examples of vernacular photographs include travel and vacation photos, family snapshots, photos of friends, class portraits, identification photographs, and photobooth images. Vernacular photographs are types of "accidental" art, in that they often are unintentionally artistic.

Closely related to vernacular photography is "found photography," which in one sense refers to the recovery of a "lost," unclaimed, or discarded vernacular photograph or snapshot. Found photos can be found at flea markets, thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales, in dumpsters and trash cans, between the pages of books, or on sidewalks.

The use of vernacular photography in the arts is almost as old as photography itself. Vernacular photography has become far more commonplace in recent years as an art technique and is now a widely accepted genre of art photography.

Vernacular photographs also have become popular with art collectors and with collectors of found photographs.

OUR FAVORITE WEBSITES

2008-02-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

These are our favorite websites that show, sell, trade or have anything to do with found photographs. Please don't hesitate to tell us if we're missing any!

Vernacular Photographs for Sale

http://www.bighappyfunhouse.com
http://www.thefoundphoto.com
http://www.projectb.com
http://www.snapatorium.com
http://www.spectacular-vernacular-photos.com
http://www.janehandel.com
http://www.ampersandvintage.com
http://www.carlmautz.com
http://sespe.com/snapshot
http://www.gargantuaphotos.com
http://groups.ebay.com/forum/vernacular-photography-enthusiasts/welcome/100002987

Collections of Vernacular Photographs

http://www.squareamerica.com
http://www.accidentalmysteries.com
http://www.timetales.com
http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vieilles_annonces/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/vernacular/
http://www.houseplantpicturestudio.com/HPS/liquorwebfotos/liquor.html
http://www.moderna.org/lookatme
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leastwanted/sets
http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm

Journals and Blogs

http://community.livejournal.com/foundphotos/
http://ampersandvintage.blogspot.com
http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/aguzmanphotos2000/journal1.html

Documentary about people who collect vernacular photographs

http://www.other-peoples-pictures.com