Featured Bloggers
A friend of mine sent me a link to squareamerica.com, a website that collects amateur snapshots from the past one-hundred and thirty years. The images are what you would expect to see in any household-- banal images of dance lessons and summer BBQs, blurry beach shots and plump pinups in their backyards.
The combination of anachronism and 'found image' is attractive. For those of us who weren't around in the 1920's, we perceive this decade as a patchwork of images from history text books, Hollywood movies and grandma's yellowing portrait. There is something voyeuristic but also oddly educational about looking at images from a bi-racial bi-sexual house party in the 50's; these snaps are less refined than the puritanical suzie-homemaker ads associated with the decade. Alternative grassroot histories portray the manifestations of trends and historical events in a way that we can relate...
I feel like no other medium besides photography has regarded the amateur to such an extent. We are seeing a proliferation with the rise of citizen cell-phone journalism. There will always be a differentiation between professional and non, but I think the overabundance of peaks into people's lives plays into the modern idea of ultimate transparency. Its interesting to note that just fairly recently these voyeuristic looks been main-stream heralded. Check out Found Magazine and FFFFOUND online for a digital version of found images...
Related Links:
© Copyright 2008 AOL, LLC All Rights Reserved