American snapshots

By Steven M. Johnson

Subjects: Portrait photography, History, Photograph collections

Description: This book is a fascinating personal look at old snapshot photographs the author has found for sale in shops throughout the United States. The fact that the people are captured on film by amateur photographers (presumably family members or friends) in informal settings is responsible for the charm of the natural and unselfconscious snapshot. Indeed, it is the very fact that these images were made by people close to the subjects that creates a golden window into their unguarded lives, their faces, and their body language. This, in turn, allows for an unusual opportunity to speculate on the culture and character of people otherwise lost to time and even to their own families. (How and why, after all, did the snapshots end up for sale?) This book takes a stand on behalf of these anonymous American photographers and the lost personages captured on film in their slice of time, thus establishing direct connection to the larger family of all Americans and even all humanity. [P] The author's impassioned and moving introductory essay is written as a loving and yet (in the spirit of the snapshots themselves) open letter to his long-deceased mother. This powerful heuristic device – reaching beyond his grasp – acts to unite the lives of the deceased with the living in a personal and touching manner. The photographs contained in the album section then act to weave together one great human family of parents, children, and siblings, with different geographic circumstances. [P] The central thesis developed in this essay of words and photographs is that the family of man – and by extension, all of life – is timeless indeed when viewed with love's encompassing devotion and assisted by the magic of photography. We are all connected in the cycles of life and death. This is an open book in more ways than one.