I have recently been playing with an idea that I call Snapshot Painting. I don’t know if this term has been used before, I would have thought it would have been but I haven’t found any direct reference to it.
Before saying what my idea of Snapshot Painting is I’d like to say something about the Snapshot Aesthetic.
The Snapshot Aesthetic refers to a trend in photography which was started by the Swiss photographer Robert Frank.
Frank was a formal photographer who emigrated to the U.S.A. in the fifties. He found it difficult to settle as he found much of the American culture of the day alien and crass. In 1955 he obtained a Guggenhiem Fellowship and set off on a journey across the U.S. He made a photographic record of his journey which he later published as a book entitled The Americans. Jack Kerouac provide the introduction, which greatly helped the book’s circulation as the photography was initially scorned. Frank’s feelings of disassociation had resulted in him taking pictures of everyday, some would say, banal subjects, sometimes framed a little oddly, with no great care given to setting up or retouching. Frank said “I was tired of romanticism[…] I wanted to present what I saw pure and simple.” Kerouac said “ Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.”
The Americans became a best seller and had a great influence on photographers such as Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Terry Richardson and, later, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Gary Winogrand who has said “When I’m photographing I see life[…] That’s what I deal with. I don’t see pictures in my head[…] I don’t worry how the picture is going to look. Let that take care of itself[…] It’s not about making a nice picture. That anyone can do.”
The term Snapshot originally referred to pictures taken with cheap cameras, such as the Kodak “Box” brownie, by amateurs. Now, however it had become a recognised photographic style which went on to become the predominant style in fashion magazines, many lifestyle magazines and in advertising generally. The increase in popularity of mobile phones and social media has resulted in the majority of images viewed by a given person in a day being either true snapshots taken by amateurs or pictures taken by professional photographers in the snapshot style.
Robert Frank (2008). The Americans. 3rd ed. Germany: Steidl. p1 et-al.
