Domestic Snapshots:

Toward a Grammar of Motives

David L. Jacobs
Photography is unique among the visual arts in that virtually anyone
can make satisfactory images. With Instamatics and Polaroids even young
children can make adequately exposed and focused pictures. Simple,
inexpensive equipment has made amateur photography an incalculably
popular pastime. Helmut Gemsheim estimated in 1963 that 100 million
people around the world take billions of snapshots every year.' In 1964 12
million British amateur photographers took 600 tnillion photographs, and
in the process spent some 69 million pounds.^ A mere thirty years after the
invention of the polaroid process an estimated 50 million Americans own
Polaroid equipment.^ Whatever the precise iigures, the popularity of the
medium is seen everywhere in our society. An overwhelming majority of
American households are equipped with at least one camera with which the
family creates a storehouse of images about itself. Photography is fully
democratic: its popularity is shared by people representing virtually all
social, economic and racial groups.
The snapshots produced in such prodigious numbers by untrained,
amateur photographers are the subject of this paper. The popularity of
photography seems to have its sources in something other than fashion or
faddishness. Too many people for too many years have been attracted to the
medium for such glib answers to he taken seriously. Photography, clearly, is
a bona fide phenomenon, and it should be regarded as such. Photography,
because of its great popularity, obviously satisfies certain individual and
social needs. In order to account for the popularity of photography, then, we
must speculate on the nature of these needs, and try to determine how
photography, and specifically snapshooting, helps to satisfy them.
Unfortunately there is little substantive literature, and thus no
estahlished methodology that equips us for this kind of endeavor.
Magazines like Popular Photography, Camera 35, and Modern
Photography serve basically to disseminate technical information. They
are filled with chatty columns that inform their readers how to make
"better" pictures. Though they appeal to amateur photographers, they
seldom if ever raise serious critical questions ahout their readers' work. Less
mass-oriented writers are usually concerned with either the history of the
medium or the photographs of "art photographers" or other professionals,
most of whom work in quite di^erent modes. Snapshots, and their makers,
receive very little attention.
The few references we do find to shapshots often have the effect of
discouraging further thought on the matter. Most writers have treated the
93
94 Journal of American Culture
snapshot with considerable disdain. Alfred Stieglitz regarded with
contempt "every Tom, Dick and Harry who ... leam how to set something
or other on a senstitiveplate."^ Stieglitz's well-known dictum that "art is for
the few and by the few," furthennore, hardly served to encourage critical
attention to popular photography.^ Helmut Gemsheim, in his massive hut
flawed History of Photography, devotes one four-page chapter to "push-
button photography." He claims that the simplicity of the "Brownie"
cameras in the 18808 "did much for the popularization—and subsequent
decadence—of photography."^ He adds that, the "new camera enthusiasts
were entirely devoid of artistic training and feeling," and that simplified
equipment replaced the "ardent amateur" with "the new machine man."^
Beaumont Newhall, in his influential history of the medium, displays
none of Gemsheim's hauteur, perhaps because he never really deals with
the subject. He discusses small camera work (e.g., 35 mm) in terms of
photographers like Erich Salomon and Cartier-Bresson, and in his two
pages on the polaroid process he emphasizes its technical aspects.^
It is worth noting that those writers who pose the most interesting
questions about snapshots do so from sociological and psychological
perspectives. Marie Czach, writing in a recent Afterimage, reviews an
exhibit of 300 photographs (and another 300 artifacts) entitled, "At Home,
Domestic life in the Post Centennial Era, 1876-1920." Particularly
interesting are her insights about the role snapshots play in establishing
identity. She argues that the pictures of A.H. Dahl comprised

peirt of a system which bound the Norwegian community together and enhanced its sense of
achievement by the visible documentation of economic success, as well aa the more subtle
satisfaddon of participation in the developing of American national taste."

In claiming that the pictures "show what people were proud of, thought
interesting, and what they wanted to show others," Czach suggests that
some snapshops represent self-made signs of class identity, and, more
specifically, material acquisition and upward mobility.
Stanley Milgram and Paul Byers also write provocatively on the
imaging qualities of snapshots, though they emphasize individuals within
a family rather than more extended groups or communities. Milgram, a
professor of psychology at the City University of New York, argues that
"photographic portraits are hest seen as the product of a social
relationship," and he is especially interested in the "self-presentational
energy" that some subjects manifest as they are photographed.^^ Byers, an
anthropologist at Columbia University, sees photographs "as objects with
which people arrange and rearrange relations among themselves," and he
adds that
the pbotograher is aiways a part of the context of events he is photographing; he can never
photograph human behavior without being part of it, and his photographs are necessarily a
product of his interaction and selectivity."
Byers suggests that this idea can provide interesting insights into how we
experience and judge certain kinds of snapshops.
.. .when a mother looks at a photograph of her child and does or does not likeit, she is comparing
 Domestic Snapshots 95
the photograph with her own image of the child. If the photo^aph matches her image with
RatiBfactory congruence, the picture is good. If it does not, the photograph is unsuitahle.'^

Both Byers and Milgram groxind their ideas in what I would call a relational
model. We will return to this idea later in the paper.
Interesting aa the ideas advanced by Czach, Milgram and Byers may
be, all three writers are limited by the lack of solid, verifiable research on the
subject of popular photography. I share their difficulties, and, like them, am
forced to speculate. There has been no carefully conducted research
concerned with how people regard photographs of themselves, or snapshots
that they themselves made. And no one has studied how families relate to
the historical archives that family albums and collections represent.
Accordingly I am forced to posit a rather vague and amorphous "most
people," and then speculate about how they may be regarding their
creations. The one demonstrable fact is the omnipresent evidence that
snapshooting is a tremendously popular activity.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "snapshot" was
originally a hunting term, a "quick shot taken without deliberate aim,
especially one of a rising bird or quickly moving animal." The word was
first applied to photography by Sir John Herschel, who, in 1860, imagined a
photographer taking a "snapshot" in a fraction of a second. Herschel's use
of the word singles out a characteristic of snapshots that is still pertinent:
the fact that they are quickly made images. Kodaks and polaroids are small,
light and take "fast" films that allow their users to hand hold the camera in
virtually any situation. The snapshooter, with such equipment at his
disposal, can react quickly to a scene and still emerge with satisfactorily
exposed and focussed prints.
Such equipment is perfectly suited for the snapshooter's objectives.
Wilson Hicks argues that in snapshots the subject matter is much more
important than technical proficiency:
Even though little Alice's face is chalked out by the sun, or half lost in a shadow, it iB Btill little
Alice. The viewer, knowing her BO well, by a trick of the imagination Bees the real httle Alice
whenever he looks at her image, which he deludes himself into believing is much better than it
actually is.''
The snapshooter is primarily interested in whether the subject is
recognizable. Issues like composition, uniform sharpness thoughout the
picture plane, or rich tones are subordinate. Shapshooters do not often
employ unusual camera angles. Typically, the subjects stare directly into
the camera, and the photographer takes the picture at eye level. The
equipment simplifies the technical variables so that the photographer can
direct most of his attention toward his subject.
The straightforward presentation of the subject, then, is an important
characteristic of snapshots. Furthermore, these subjects are usually people
who are known to the photographer, and, in the case of group portraits,
people who are known to one another. The subject, most of the time, is
family or close &iends who are situated among familiar surroundings, like
the home itself.'* The setting is often an important consideration for
analyzing snapshots. As Milgram suggests, "the meaning of a photograph
96 Journal of American Culture
emerges not only from the people in it, but in their linkage to the objects that
surround them."*^
Snapshots are remarkably domestic. Not only do they usually treat the
family within domestic contexts hut often several members of the family
share in their making. The camera changes hands, and so the snapshooter
of one moment will soon be the subject. The snapshooter's role is temporary,
and affected by the act that another family member will soon be taking the
pictures. Furthermore, while there are often differences in claae, race and
economic status between professional photographers and their subjects, the
snapshooter and his subjects are peers. Domestic snapshots are images in
which members of the family have taken turns as imagers and those
imaged, and in which the members of a set—the family—have envisioned,
photographically, other members of the same set.
Domestic snapshots do not typically document such mimdane events
as the family watching television, or working in the kitchen, or mowing the
lavra. Rather, snapshots are usually made when the family is engaged in
extraordinary experiences. Whether it is the excitement of a child opening
packages under a Christmas tree or first seeing her birthday cake, or the
marriage of a relative, or the family at the beach, the snapshot documents
moments that are easily distinguishable from the everyday experiences of
the family. They depict times of special or heightened activity, and, at
times, significance. The participants in such an event realize that the
occasion is special, and they realize that they are photographed precisely
because of this speeialness. As participants, they are conscious hoth ofthe
meaning of the event, and their roles within it.
Such consciousness has several implications for the often-heard claims
that snapshots are informal images. As we have seen, snapshots are
usually made during special days that have particular significance, and
often a formally established network of symbolism. These events are often
accompanied by a set of private symbolic behaviors (who packs the ear;
stopping at certain restaurants en route; a particular kind of birthday cake)
that are based upon a family's unique experiences. Other occasions are
significant by virtue of the culture at large. Holidays like Christmas,
Thanksgiving and Independence Day incorjrorate symholism that is
intrinsic to the events themselves. Most often there is a comhination of
private and puhlic symbols. In weddings, for example, the exchange of
rings is a puhlic symbol, while the rings themselves often embody a couple's
private symbolism. It is generally true that the occasions which evoke
snapshooting are accompanied by a set of established, semantically fixed
symbols that define and contribute to the uniqueness of the day.
These symbols often determine how the snapshooter selects his
materials. The snapshooter takes pictures of his daughter blowing out
hirthday candles or opening presents, or of a relative with knife poised over
a browned bird. In instructing the children to hold balloons, Willie Johnson
includes in his image symbols that typify his daughter's birthday (plate 1).
At times the continuity of the action becomes less important than seizing
the symbolic moment, and thus the snapshooter's commands to wait until
all is in readiness, or until the subjects are properly arranged. The
snapshooter, in such cases, consciously poses his subjects rather than
 Domestic Snapshots 97

Willie Johnson
98 Journal of American Culture
responding to events, symbolic or othenvise, as they naturally unfold. He
situates the family within a preconceived symholic matrix.
The subjects, of course, are also cognizant of such matrices, and they
often are self-directorial. In the ahove examples the subjects, unless they are
very young, willingly delay candle-blowing, present-opening or turkey-
carving until the requisite image is made. This is even more the case when
adults are posing in sjmibolically rich situations. In short, the subjects
wholly participate in the image-making process. They, too, are consciously
engaged in making images that incorporate the symbols or symbolic
actions that are part of the occasion.
As the events that snapshooters usually record are exceptional, so too is
the behavior of the participants. Holidays can evoke in us culturally
prescribed and sanctioned kinds of behavior. A family on Christmas
morning is interested in projecting a positive image of itself in part because
of the ambience that surrounds the day itself. This can have a
countervailing effect upon the depressed moods that often accompany the
December holidays. We have all witnessed a would-be festive table
populated by hostile, argumentative and apparently unhappy relatives. Yet
when the camera appears all are smiling. Most of us, long before we reach
adolescence, have been taught to smile—to "say cheese"—for the camera.
But beyond this, we ean explain this kind of transformation in terms of our
wanting to portray ourselves in a positive fashion. We image ourselves with
the full knowledge that we will subsequently "re-experience" the moment by
looking at the snapshot. Such projection, or, in Stanley Milgram's term,
"self-presentational energy." is derived from the nature of the event
depicted {holidays like Christmas are times of joy); or from a sense of family
("we are close knit, and happy in one another's company"); or from a sense
of self ("I am happy"; or when looking back at the image, "I was happy
then"). We are not wholly "natural" at such moments; rather, we project
images of ourselves, poses that sometimes harden into postures.
The mere presence of a camera can evoke a certain amount of posing.
Familiar as we may be with having our pictures taken, few of us could say
that our behavior remains identical regardless of the presence or absence of
a photographer. Even if the snapshooter is a trusted member of the family
our behavior changes. All parties are conscious that pictures are to be taken.
This mutually shared awareness translates into certain conventional
snapshot grammars that can readily be seen in Willie Johnson's picture
(plate 1). The children and mother look directly and unabashedly into the
camera. There is not even a pretense of casualness. Obviously, these people
were not arranged in a pyramid in the middle of a birthday party. The
picture, rather, is carefully posed, with the shorter, young children in front.
And Johnson, no doubt, told all parties to smile, though with only partial
success. We ean think of this picture as typical of many snapshots insofar
as the subjects are conscious that their picture is being taken, and do not
pretend otherwise. While "props" like Christmas trees, living room
furniture, or, for that matter, other people, might abound, the subjects do
not, typically, relate to them in the picture. Rather, they present themselves
to the camera, or more accurately, to the person behind the camera. The
subjects communicate their aw£u-eness that this situation, this pose, this
 Domestic Snapshots 99
arrangement, exists only for the sake of making pictures.
I have argued that many, if not most snapshots can usefully be thought
of as domestic images. Their domesticity is reflected in the kinds of
situations and attitudes that snapshots customarily depict, and in their
iconic conventions. It is important to add that the snapshooter and his
subjects later become the principal audience of the pictures. Unlike
photographs that appear in the media, which are directed toward a vast,
heterogeneous audience, snapshots are made of, by, and for a small,
mutually known group. The snapshooter and his subject can dwell quite
successfully within a realm of privately symbolic poses and expressions,
whose importance can only be recognized by a handful of initiates. In short,
snapshots often reflect a specific and exclusive iconography. Their
meaning is often specific to tbe snapshooter, his subject and tbe audience.
In this respect snapshots can be contrasted to the kinds of images
included in Edward Steichen's landmark exhihitioin. The Family of Man.
Carl Sandburg, who was Steichen's brother-in-law, writes in tbe Prologue to
the book tbat stemmed from the exhibition:
The first cry of a newborn baby in Chicago or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon, has the
same pitch and key, each saying, 'I am! I have come through! I belong! I am a member of the
Family."'^

Throughout the Prologue, Sandburg, with more than a little

sentimentalism, emphasizes the archetypal, universal message of the
images. The audience is not given, and is not dependent upon specific
information about these subjects in order to apprehend the meaning of the
photographs. Indeed, Steichen might well have argued tbat the specific
identities of the subjects of these images, and even their class and
nationality, are irrelevant. The images included in Family of Man are
generalized by virtue of their lack of specificity and context.
With a snapshot, however, familiarity with its contexts greatly assists
us in appreciating and understanding its meaning. If we are unfamiliar
with the subject and setting of a given snapshot, then for us the picture is
semantically limited. To be sure, we can look at such images with pleasure,
and in some cases can gain considerable information from them. Wben we
look, for example, at a thirty year old snapshot of strangers, we can leam
much about how people lived in that period. But, at tbe same time, if I look at
a snapshot taken of me, thirty years ago, in my living room, I bring to that
image a wealth of information and memories. I animate that image in ways
that no one else, excepting other memhers of my family, can approximate.
We can make the same kind of distinction with Frank Allison's untitled
snapshot (plate 2). In this snapshot the fountain and its graffiti may have a
special, shared significance for the snapshooter, subject and audience. The
fountain may have been the site of countless family picnics in the past. Or
perhaps the graffiti were the aftermath of some infamous, drunken spree.
Such prior, extra-pbotographic knowledge would be essential in
reconstructing the context and meaning ofthis image. If we are unaware of
tbe sym,bolic context, then we view the snapshot with vastly impoverished
eyes. Snapshots are often ciphers that mystifv, that defy reconstruction.
But if, on the other hand, we know or are a part of its contexts, then the
100 Journal of American Culture

Frank Allison

snapshot becomes a rich source of associations and meanings.

The relationships involved in snapshot photography are virtually
xinique in that the photographer, his suhjects and the audience for the image
usually derive from the same social unit: the nuclear family. This
remarkably enclosed and discrete set of interrelationships is, I would argue,
the major defining characteristic of most snapshots. Unlike many forms of
photography, snapshots are usually made with the full awareness by all
parties that pictures are heing made. And, unlike most forms of professional
photography, snapshots are made with the understanding that the primary
audience for the images is the snapshooter and the subjects themselves. In
snapshots, all of the participants—the imager, those imaged and the
audience for the images—are known to one another, and usually intimately.
Accordingly, snapshots reflect the social relationships and interactions of a
given family. They are signs for how members of the family simultaneously
image themselves and are imaged by other family memhers. It is with this
in mind that I will suggest some of the sources of the vast popularity of
snapshot imagery.
So far we have looked at the kinds of subjects and events which the
snapshooter typically concems himself with, how snapshots incorporate a
 Domestic Snapshots
mixture of public and private symbolism, and, perhaps more important, the
fact that snapshots are usually made by, of, and for the nuclear family.
Some of these characteristics are themselves partial explanations for the
popularity of snapshots within our society. The fact that cameras are both
affordable and easy to use is, if not exactly a cause, then at least a condition
for this popularity. If, for example, video tapes shared these qualities, the
snapshot might well be obsolete.
But beyond this practical level there are more subtle issues at work.
Man, to alter the well-known phrase, is the image-making animal. And, we
might add, his favorite image is usually himself. It has only been within the
last 125 years, however, that most people have had the opportunity to be
part of a visual image. Our distant ancestors, unless they were monied or
artistically inclined, have not left us the legacy of their countenances. In the
past portraits have been a function of wealth. People of the lower classes,
when they were included in paintings at all, were usually placed in genre
pictures which they probably never saw; these paintings, like most art, were
the exclusive domain and property of the landed classes.
Those wealthy or titled people who sat for portraits knew that the
results would be displayed publicly, whether in a castle or in the galleries
that adorned many manors. As E.H. Gombrich has written, the portrait was
... an image commiBsioned and made to sum up the sitter's social status and career, and to hand
down his features as a memorial to hia descendants and as a monument to later ages.'''

A portrait was immortality constructed in oils, and accordingly the sitter

often devoted considerable time and money to it. He was interested, not
surprisingly, in emerging with a positive, self-aggrandizing image.
With the invention of photography portraits were no longer an
exclusive privilege of wealth. The daguerreotype was inexpensive, and
within the reach of millions of pocketbooks. The historian Robert Taft
estimates that by the mid-1850s some three million daguerreotypes were
made every year in America alone.^^ The majority were portraits made in
studios. The invention of simple hand cameras by Eastman in the 1880s
allowed people to make their own pictures instead of having to rely upon the
skills of the professional. Some 100 years later all of us, by virtue of
improved photographic technology, are photographed with unprecedented
frequency. We are, if nothing else, the most imaged society in history.
While the invention of photography broadened the scope of portraiture,
I would argue that the psychology of those portrayed basically remained
the same. After all, the snapshot, like the oil painting, is also destined for a
family gallery, though it is most often in the form of a scrapbook. The
snapshot is still an image, even if humbler in origins and design, which
attests to the sitter's existence, and which will outlast him as well. I do not
believe that there is a fundamental difference, psychologically, between
Henry VHI posing for Holbein the Younger, and Mr. Jones posing for Mrs.
Jones on the front stoop. Both subjects project what they hope to be positive
qualities, and in both cases the images become a part of history, even if with
Henry VIII it is a national, public history, while with Mr. Jones it is the
history of a family.
The popularity of snapshooting stems in large part from the fact that it
102 Journal of American Culture
provides us with a readily accessihle means by which we can image and be
imaged. The snapshooter and his subject are both engaged in imaging
processes, and both, albeit in different ways, expend what we earlier termed
self-presentational energy. This energy is at the heart of the snapshot, and
thus we should examine it in more detail.
Sam Jones poses for a picture to be taken by his father, Walter. Sam
addresses, or "presents" himself to a variety of audiences. On the most
immediate level, he images himself for family and friends. Such an
audience, while it obviously knows the "real" Sam, is not necessarily a
supportive audience for the snapshot itself. Indeed, many snapshot subjects
have found tHat families and friends can be a most critical audience. This
could well be true for another primary audience of the snapshot, Sam
himself. The snapshot becomes a means by which Sam views himself, and
he may well be disappointed in the result insofar as his mental self-image
may not conform with the specific, frozen image that the camera affords
him. Beyond this, it is also possible that his self-image is not wholly
positive, which will affect how Sam presents himself, and how he relates to
the subsequent image. Many portrait photographers have discussed the
problems of satisfying a client in similar terms. The late Imogen
Cunningham, whose career in photography spanned 75 years, said that she
often felt "despondent" after a session with a sitter because of

... people's lack of acceptance of anything I did. Very often people can't face themeelveB. They
can't live with the faces they were bom with. It's not a nice occupation to try to please people with
their own faces.'*

Sam is also projecting himself into time. He knows that at some future
date he will use this snapshot and others as mnemonics for earlier periods of
his life. If Sam is over, say, ten years old, he has probably seen his parents
use snapshots or home movies in this way, and it is likely that he has done
the same with old pictures of himself. Sam, as he poses for his father, makes
a partial history of himself; he projects an image into a known format, the
snapshot, that he will later use as a means of re-experiencing his past.
Similarly, he knows that this same image may be used by his children in
order to "know" their father at an earlier age, and by their children, who
may know his bodily self exclusively from the snapshots they inherit.
Indeed, for that great majority of us who will not be rememhered for heroic
acts or immortal creations, snapshots may well be the main items that
survive us. Sam, then, is not only making a history for himself, but he also is
projecting himself to an audience for whom the images will be a major
historical source for their deceased ancestor. The snapshot, seen from this
perspective, represents a kind of immortality, a fact that significantly
aifects how Sam presents himself.
Father and son are equally concerned with viewers who will, at a later
date, view the snapshot mnemonically. An awareness of the audience
affects both snapshooter and subject in similar, if not identical
psychological ways, although their means of enactment differ
significantly. While Sam presents himself to a variety of audiences, his
father Walter enacts this "presentation" through the powers of the camera.
Photographs are man-made, despite the presence of what many have
 Domestic Snapshots 103
viewed as an autonomous image-making machine, the camera. While the
snapshooter has fewer options than the photographer who works with a
Leica or Hasselblad, the most important option of all is fully operative;
Walter Jones selects. He positions himself in relationship to his suhject; or
he may tell Sam to stand in a certain way, or hold his hands behind his
hack, or put his hat on. And then Wfdter peers through the viewfinder,
watching his son, waiting for the right moment. The decisive moment for
Walter Jones is a function of his relationship with his son; it is bom out of
the totality of his experiences with and feelings about Sam. Walter waits
until what he sees in the viewfinder approximates his mental image of Sam.
Walter's selections and Sam's self-presentation are both, in their different
ways, efforts to make a snapshot that conforms to their respective mental
images. In hoth cases, as Kenneth E. Boulding writes in a different yet
appropriate context, it is "this subjective knowledge ... this Image that
largely governs [their] behavior."^"
While Sam's primary interest lies in imaging himself, Walter's
intentions are somewhat more complex. He may, on one level, try to image
his son in a way that is compatible with Sam's self-image. It is not unusual
for snapshot suhjects to give instructions to the snapsbooter, much as
wetdthy patrons told painters how they wished to be portrayed. But Walter
is also imaging his son in terms of how he sees him. His "subjective
knowledge," bis mental image of Sam, in part determines how Walter fills
the picture frame, and when he snaps the shutter. Moreover, Walter is also,
on a more subtle level, imaging himself as Sam's father. Walter wants to
make a positive, idealized portrait, for if Sam is portrayed positively, then it
speaks well for the father. Imagine, for a moment, the familiar tableau of a
proud parent showing snapshots of their children. Walter takes his
snapshot to work, and his co-workers see a seemingly well-adjusted,
content, smiling young man. Walter beams with pride for his upstanding
son, and for himself insofar as the snapshot reflects his tutelage. The
snapshot is a symbol for Walter's fatherhood, and Sam's smiling
countenance is an index for his father's adeptness at his task.
The model suggested above may be faulted for taking the snapshot too
seriously. We know from experience that not all snapshots involve such
complex patterns of psychological projections, or such ponderous
existential underpinnings. We do not, after all, experience our driver's
license picture as a sign for our immortality. And we do not invariably wax
narcissistic whenever a camera appears on the scene. My account of Walter
and Sam Jones is proposed as a paradigm of the levels of imaging that can
operate in snapshots. It is unlikely that any one snapshot would
incorporate all, or perhaps even most of these levels of imaging. But, at tbe
same time, it is difficult to imagine a snapshot situation that does not
involve at least some of these factors. As Thomas Szasz says, "the self is not
something one finds; it is something one creates;""' the Joneses create
iconic selves, although they may not be fully aware that such a creative
process is at hand. I believe that in virtually any snapshot the photographer
and his subject are involved in self-imaging processes.
These processes, for all of their complexity bom of motives, audiences
and definitions of self, result in snapshots that are almost always idealized.
104 Joumal of American Culture
We all know, bothfromthose social scientists who have predicted, described
and analyzed the demise of the nuclear family, and from our own
experiences, that a family's intricate network of inter-relationships is never
wholly positive. But snapshots, though they usually treat domestic
situations, seldom reflect negative experiences or emotional states. They do
not depict a very wide range of moods, emotions or attitudes. We seldom see
Sam as contemplative, hostile, doubting or confused, even though these
moods, need it be said, Eire with all of us on occasion. Rather, the smile—the
presentation of a positive self—is virtually omnipresent in snapshot
imagery. We have seen that the photographer and his subject have
considerable control over the final picture. If Sam resolutely smiles, then we
have a picture of a smiling man; and Walter, because ofthe selections he can
make with the camera, possesses substantial powers in rendering his
subject as he sees fit. Snapshooter and subject are, in a sense, making
propositions to themselves and their audiences. These propositions are
directed to themselves ("this is my real self) and to others ("this is how I
would be seen and remembered"). Thus we emerge with idealized, self-
aggrandizing images that can be thought of as mythic projections of
ourselves and our views of others. There is, in other words, a self-created and
self-directed rhetoric at work in snapshot imagery.
These idealized and highly conventional images are gathered into
family albums, which are in tum rhetorical histories insofar as they render
the past in laudatory or self-serving terms. Suzanne K. lianger has
suggested that
Memory is the great organizer of consciousness. Itsimplifies and composes our perceptions into
units of personal knowledge. ^^
Family albums, in tum, condition memories. Lake any history, family
albums are bom of selections. As we have seen, important choices are made
during snapshooting, and this is also the case when some snapshots are
selected for family albums, and others discarded. Family albums, then, are
not particularly reliable indices for our actual histories. Rather, they are
constructs that propose positive histories. They attest to the fact that we are
part of a legacy, a bloodline, a way of ascribing meaning and value. In them
we are imaged as significant participants in the family's history. Family
albums, in short, reflect the same kinds of biases, motives and
historiographical difficulties that any historical work manifests. Their
relationship to actual history is properly thought of as metaphorical.
Snapshooting in modem America represents much more than a
popular recreational activity. It is part of a long, if not always glorious,
tradition in Western society. We share with our forebears the sometimes
narcissistic desire to be imaged for posterity. Snapshooting allows us to
reify mental images that might otherwise remain unexpressed. We use
snapshots to communicate to ourselves, and those around us, and those who
will succeed us, that we in fact exist. With snapshots we become our own
historians, and through them we proclaim and affirm our existence.
 Domestic Snapshots 105
Notes
'Helmut and Alison Gemsheim, Creative Photography (Detroit; Wayne State University
Press, 1963), p. 13.
''Helmut and Alison Gemsheim, The History of Photography (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1969). p. 134.
'The Editors ofTime-Iife Books, Light and Film (Alexandria, VA.: Time-Life Books, 1977), p.
134.
'Alfred Stieglitz, "The Hand Camera—Its Present Importance," The American Annual of
Photography (1897); reprinted in Photographers on Photography, ed. Nathan Lyons (Englewood
CUffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966). p. 108.
^Mary Ann Tighe, review of Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant.Garde. by William
Innes Homer, in New York Times Book Review, 8 May 1977, p. 9.
^Helmut and Alison Gemsheim, The History of Photography, p. 422.

"Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: The Museum of Modem Art,
1964), pp. 152-159, 195-196.
"Marie Czach. " "At Home": ReconBtmcting Everyday Life Through Photographs and
Artifacts." Afterimage 5 (Sept.. 1977), p. 11.
'"Stanley Milgram. "City FamilieB," Psychology Today (Jan.. 1977), pp. 59.
' 'Paul Byers. "Cameras Don't Take Pictures." Columbia University Forum (Winter, 1966);
reprinted in Afterimage (April 1977). pp. 8-9.
l a y e r s , p. 9.
''Wilson Hicks, "Photographs and Public," Aperture 2 (1953). p. 4.
"While vacation snapshots would at first appear to be significant exceptions to these
generalizations. I would argue that they. too. are essentially domestic. Obviously, a snapshot of
the Grand Canyon does not treat a known or domestic setting. But while the scene itself is alien,
the family, or at least some of its members, are usually prominently included in the picture. Such
images are not, predominantly, documents of the place; rather they announce: "The Franklins
were here." They represent, in this way. the family's assertion of ita existence in foreign climes.
•^'Stanley Milgram, "City Families," Psychology Today (Jan., 1977). p. 62.
'^Carl Sandburg. "Prologue" to The Family of Man, created by Edward Steichen (New York:
Museum of Modem Art, 1955), p. 2.
" E.H. Gombrich, "The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life
and Art," in Art. Perception, and Reality (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p.
16.
'"Robert Taft, Photography and the American Scene (New York: Macmillan Co., 1938; reprint
ed.. New York: Dover Publications, 1963). p. 76.
'^Interview with Bamaby Conrad III, in Interviews with Master Photographers (New York:
Paddington Press, Ltd., 1977). p. 49.
^Kenneth E. Boulding, The Image (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press, 1956). p. 6.
•^'Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973), p. 55,
"Suzanne K. Langer. Feeling and Form (New York: Scribner's Sons, 19,'j3), p. 263.