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A snapshot is a
photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now create ...
that is "shot" spontaneously and quickly, most often without artistic or journalistic intent and usually made with a relatively cheap and compact camera. Common snapshot subjects include the events of everyday life, often portraying family members, friends, pets, children playing, birthday parties and other celebrations, sunsets,
tourist attraction A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural ...
s and the like. Snapshots can be technically "imperfect" or amateurish: poorly framed or composed, out of focus, and/or inappropriately lighted by flash. Automated settings in consumer cameras have helped to obtain a technologically balanced quality in snapshots. Use of such settings can reveal the lack of expert choices that would entail more control of the focus point and shallower
depth of field The depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus in an image captured with a camera. Factors affecting depth of field For cameras that can only focus on one object dis ...
to achieve more pleasing images by making the subject stand out against a blurred background. Snapshot photography can be considered the purest form of photography in providing images with the characteristics that distinguish photography from other visual media — its ubiquity, instantaneity, multiplicity and verisimilitude.


History


Instantaneous photography

When photography was introduced in 1839, exposure times took several minutes. To obtain a reasonably clear image, the camera could not be handheld and the photographer looked through the back of the camera under a black cloth before loading a sensitive plate, while his subjects had to stay totally still. Special head-rests and arm-rests could be used, and even if a subject managed to stay comfortable under these circumstances, they had to try to keep their facial expression in check if they wanted their features to properly show on the picture. This made it impossible to capture any spontaneity. During the following decades many kinds of improvements, new processes and faster light-sensitive emulsions were developed. Rather than removing and replacing a lens cap or other cover or screen, mechanical shutters started to be applied for better control of exposure times. With the development of instantaneous photography, experimental photographers hoped to capture all the details that had remained blurry or vague in previous photographic techniques. A more natural expression in portraiture was considered a priority, while others desired to be able to photograph atmospheric details in landscapes. In the 1850s, the earliest examples of "instantaneous photography" were made. Much was pioneered not by ambitious fine artists, but by commercial photographers catering to a public that mostly fancied affordable small formats, such as cabinet cards and stereo views. Subjects often reflected popular recreational activities of the time. As spending time at the beach had become a favorite pastime in pioneering countries France and England, seashore views became a very popular topic and the clarity of waves in such pictures illustrated the developing instantaneous techniques very well. Initially, practitioners were satisfied if they could capture something of the shapes of waves. An albumen seaside view at Boulogne-sur-Mer by Edmond Bacot was a very early example, supposedly made in May 1850. The experimental albumen glass negative showed many waves as an undefined white area in a picture with a relatively high contrast.
John Dillwyn Llewelyn John Dillwyn Llewelyn FRS FRAS (12 January 1810 – 24 August 1882) was a Welsh botanist and pioneer photographer. Early life He was born in the parish of Llangyfelach, Swansea, Wales, the eldest son of Lewis Weston Dillwyn and Mary Dillwyn ...
exhibited several early instantaneous pictures of the seaside, in London in 1854 and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855. These were well-received by critics, with detailed analysis of how well the waves were pictured. Llewelyn probably was an early adopter of the use of an automatic shutter, but it's uncertain when he would have started this practice. Exposure times for instantaneous photography were generally understood to be one second or less, but the term lacked a set definition and some would even claim their photographs exposed for up to 30 seconds could be called instantaneous. Thomas Skaife realised that smaller lenses and smaller photographs needed smaller exposure times and developed his small "Pistolgraph" camera accordingly in 1859. By the end of the year, he claimed that he and his pupils had made some 500 pictures using the hand-held camera with spring-shutters. The tiny "pistolgrams" could best be viewed with a magnifying glass, but it was also possible to make enlargements (an uncommon practice at the time), hundreds of times the size of the original, with sufficient sharpness. A broche-sized original "chromo-crystal" example depicting three children was praised by the ''Brighton Herald'': "the laughing, mocking eye of the pet in the centre is, indeed, a photographic triumph, and the characters of the two others are unmistakeably stamped upon their features." In 1860,
John Herschel Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (; 7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical wo ...
wrote about "the possibility of taking a photograph, as it were, by a snap-shot — of securing a picture in a tenth of a second of time". Herschel believed this was already possible at the time, or otherwise would soon be. He also took for granted that this was just one step away from the realization of stereoscopic motion pictures.


Kodak influence

The snapshot concept was introduced to the public at large by
Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
, which introduced the Brownie box camera in 1900. Kodak encouraged families to use the Brownie to capture moments in time and to shoot photos without being concerned with producing perfect images. Kodak advertising urged consumers to "celebrate the moments of your life" and find a "Kodak moment".


Polaroid cameras

Instant camera An instant camera is a camera which uses self-developing film to create a chemically developed print shortly after taking the picture. Polaroid Corporation pioneered (and patented) consumer-friendly instant cameras and film, and were follow ...
s, that would develop and fix a picture immediately after shooting it, were developed and successfully marketed by
Edwin H. Land Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an Russian-American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, ...
's Polaroid Corporation since 1948. Several other companies followed the example. At the time, most other cameras would produce a negative that had to be developed and fixed with chemicals, and then reproduced as enlarged prints in dark rooms or laboratories. Many professional photographers and filmmakers used the technique as quick test and reference material before engaging in the more time-consuming definitive production of their work, of which results could only be viewed much later. These snapshot polaroids often focused on Instant cameras also had some success on the consumer market, but never became as widely used by amateurs as the cheaper systems with negative film rolls.


Snapshot aesthetic

An early theorist of snapshot aesthetic was the Austrian architectural critic, Joseph August Lux, who in 1908 wrote a book called ''Künstlerische Kodakgeheimnisse'' (Artistic Secrets of the Kodak) in which he championed the use of Kodak cameras like the Brownie. Guided by a position that was influenced by the Catholic critique of modernity, he argued that the ease of use of the camera meant that people could photograph and document their surroundings and thus produce, what he hoped, was a type of stability in the ebb and flow of the modern world. The term 'snapshot aesthetic' arose with a trend within
fine art photography Fine-art photography is photography created in line with the vision of the photographer as artist, using photography as a medium for creative expression. The goal of fine-art photography is to express an idea, a message, or an emotion. This stand ...
in the USA from around 1963 . The style typically features apparently banal everyday subject matter and off-centered framing. Subject matter is often presented without apparent link from image-to-image and relying instead on juxtaposition and disjunction between individual photographs. The originator of the American trend was
Robert Frank Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled ''The Americans'', earned Frank comparisons to a modern-da ...
, with his book of photographs, ''
The Americans ''The Americans'' is an American period spy drama television series created by Joe Weisberg that aired on the FX television network for six seasons from January 30, 2013, to May 30, 2018. Weisberg and Joel Fields also serve as showrunners a ...
'', published in 1958. The snapshot tendency was promoted by John Szarkowski, who was head of the photography department at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...
from 1962 to 1991, and it became especially fashionable from the late 1970s until the mid-1980s. Notable practitioners include Garry Winogrand,
Nan Goldin Nancy Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is '' The Ballad of Sexual Depe ...
,
Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. Tillmans was the first photog ...
,
Martin Parr Martin Parr (born 23 May 1952) is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in p ...
, William Eggleston, and
Terry Richardson Terrence Richardson (born August 14, 1965) is an American fashion and portrait photographer. He has shot advertising campaigns for Marc Jacobs, Aldo, Supreme, Sisley, Tom Ford, and Yves Saint Laurent among others, and also done work for ma ...
. In contrast with photographers like
W. Eugene Smith William Eugene Smith (December 30, 1918 – October 15, 1978) was an American photojournalist.Peacock, Scot. "W(illiam) Eugene Smith." ''Contemporary Authors Online'', Gale, 2003. ''Biography In Context'' He has been described as "perhaps the sin ...
and Gordon Parks, these photographers aimed "not to reform life, but to know it." Frank has said "I was tired of romanticism, nbsp;. . . I wanted to present what I saw, pure and simple." Szarkowski brought to prominence the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand in his influential exhibition “ New Documents” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967, in which he identified a new trend in photography: pictures that seemed to have a casual, snapshot-like look and had subject matter that seemed strikingly ordinary. Winogrand has said "When I'm photographing, I see life, nbsp;. . . That's what I deal with. I don't have pictures in my head… I don't worry about how the picture is going to look. I let that take care of itself… It's not about making a nice picture. That anyone can do." Later photographers such as
Daidō Moriyama is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine '' Provoke''. Moriyama’s rough, unfettered photographic style makes use of sharply tilted angles, grain ...
, Hiromix, Ryan McGinley, Miko Lim, and Arnis Balcus gained international recognition thanks to the snapshot aesthetic. From the early 1990s the style became the predominant mode in
fashion photography Fashion photography is a genre of photography which is devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items, sometimes haute couture. It typically consists of a fashion photographer taking a picture of a dressed model (person), model in a photo ...
, especially within youth fashion magazines such as ''
The Face The face is a part of the body, the front of the head. Face may also refer to: Film * ''The Magician'' (1958 film) or ''The Face'' * ''The Face'' (1996 film), an American television film * ''Face'' (1997 film), a British crime drama by Antonia ...
'' and photography from this era is often associated with the so-called ' heroin chic' look (a look often seen as having been influenced particularly by Nan Goldin). The term arose from the fascination of artists with the "classical" black-and-white
vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
snapshot, the characteristics of which were: 1) they were made with a hand-held camera on which the viewfinder could not easily 'see' the edges of the frame, unlike modern cheap
digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
s with
electronic viewfinder An electronic viewfinder (EVF) is a camera viewfinder where the image captured by the lens is displayed on a small screen (usually LCD or OLED) which the photographer can look through when composing their shot. It differs from a live preview ...
, and so the subject had to be centred; and 2) they were made by ordinary people recording the ceremonies of their lives and the places that they lived and visited.


21st century: camera phone photography

The tradition of increasingly automating the "snapshot camera" continues with inexpensive
point-and-shoot A point-and-shoot camera, also known as a compact camera and sometimes abbreviated to P&S, is a still camera designed primarily for simple operation. Most use focus free lenses or autofocus for focusing, automatic systems for setting the exposu ...
digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
s and
camera phone A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture photographs and often record video using one or more built-in digital cameras. It can also send the resulting image wirelessly and conveniently. The first commercial phone with color ca ...
s that fully automate flash, ISO, focus,
shutter speed In photography, shutter speed or exposure time is the length of time that the film or digital sensor inside the camera is exposed to light (that is, when the camera's shutter is open) when taking a photograph. The amount of light that rea ...
, and many other functions that ensure balanced quality in the results. Since the 2010s, even visual effects could easily be added real-time with software based on
augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...
technology, for instance with filters in Snapchat. Camera phones, usually kept within reach for most of the day, have made taking, sharing and online publishing of snapshots an ubiquitous everyday practice around the world. Camera phone photography has become an art form in its own right.


See also

* Candid photography *
Vernacular photography The term vernacular photography is used in several related senses. Each is in one way or another meant to contrast with received notions of fine-art photography. Vernacular photography is also distinct from both found photography and amateur phot ...


References

{{reflist Photography by genre