February 2, 2010
By Claire Sykes
The tin box overflows with old, black-and-white photographs, some curled, cracked and creased like dried fallen leaves. I pick up the one of a woman sitting in a long, yoke-necked dress, her hair pinned back. Two barefooted boys lean against her knees holding lollipops, behind them one of those boxy 1920s cars on the other side of a wood-and-wire fence. She looks at me across the generations, past her daughter and her daughter, and I look back at the great-grandmother I never knew.
This photo joins the millions that amateur and commercial photographers have taken—snapshots of everyday moments at home and exotic travels abroad, studio portraits and passport photos, mug shots and photo booth strips. Called vernacular photographs, they were created mainly by people who will never be known.
Ubiquitous, plentiful and accessible, many of these remnants of others’ lives have reincarnated themselves as lucky finds for the chronicler and the curious, the collector and the curator. And me.
Whenever I hit an antique store or estate sale, I make a beeline for the box of old black-and-whites and tintypes, and thumb through them, waiting for the ones that catch my eye. I look for story, emotion and aesthetic appeal. If I feel a resonance with subject matter or sensibility—by way of my own memories, fantasies or knowledge of photographic history—I snap the picture up.
What is it about vernacular photos that fascinate us? Since most of them come from another time, mid-20th century and before, their mere materiality charms us. Surrounded by digital and virtual images, we long for those we can actually hold in our hands, and if they’re deckled and creased, all the better.
Today’s high-tech living only accentuates the contrast between “now and then,” turning our gaze toward the past. When we look there, we enjoy basking in the quaintness and simplicity of “the olden days.” We’re intrigued by the differences and amazed by the similarities, as they relate to our own lives. While these photos emphasize our modernity, in the clothing people wore and the cars they drove, they intimate a mutuality, in the commonality of the quotidian of our lives.
Generally, those lives are lived in privacy (the origin and destination of most vernacular photos), as they capture personal moments for one’s own purpose and pleasure or those of family and friends. If we’re familiar with who took the picture, it can bring us closer to them.
When I look at the snapshot my father took (and labeled) during World War II, of a now-anonymous buddy of his floating in the Dead Sea, holding a book in one hand and a black umbrella in the other, I picture their goofy day together.
Vernacular photos also ignite our imaginations with the secrets they’ll never tell, only hinted at in the scant evidence the photographer, whether we know who the person was or not, leaves behind.
The anonymity of found photos certainly lends a more mysterious air to the images. While much information exists about a known photographer’s work, explaining his or her motives, style and audience, anonymous vernacular photos tell us nothing about these things. This gives us ample room to project whatever we want onto the picture and its creator—including calling it something it’s not.
For instance, a vernacular photo may look like art, especially when it seduces us with alluring content, but maybe that’s just an accident. At the very least, these images are sociological and historical artifacts, offering a window into people’s worlds from the past.
Today’s vernacular photographs are too new to be nostalgic, and need time to settle into place. But will we even be able to find them? Most are digital, and commonly not printed out. Once that computer’s hardware becomes obsolete, how will the photos be retrieved?
Meanwhile, there’ll always be older vernacular photos out there. I think about the ones I have of my own life—filling flowered vinyl-covered albums, shoeboxes and my computer, not to mention a couple of cameras waiting for me to unload and download. I think about the dozens of photos I have from my parents’ past.
Once I’m gone, I hope most of these pictures stay in the family. But I can also imagine someone pawing through a thrift-store box a hundred years from now and seeing my face.
© Claire Sykes. All rights reserved.
All images come from my tin-box collection.
A much longer version of this article first appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Photographer’s Forum magazine.
