Democratic Vistas: Vernacular Photography and the Common Man

Democratic Vista, New England, 1870s. Albumen Print

By Rodger Kingston

When I first taught photo history in the mid-1970s, Beaumont Newhall’s The History of Photography was the final authority on the subject. Whatever he discussed was accepted as a part of photographic history, and whatever he left out was simply not considered. That entire categories of photography were overlooked—snapshots and family photographs as well as most commercial, advertising, scientific, medical, and forensic photography, for example—was not deemed remarkable. This was no accident; Newhall’s vision was to make photography acceptable to the art world, to present photographs as art to an audience—and primarily a museum audience—that was not inclined to think of it that way. That his history emphasizes those photographic genres that support the argument for photography as art, and plays down or ignores those that don’t, should therefore surprise no one.

And Newhall succeeded far beyond anyone’s expectations. There were other photo histories—most notably Helmut Gernsheim’s—but it was primarily Newhall who dictated the shape and content of photographic history over the next fifty years and more. By progressing through the technical evolution of the medium by means of photography’s Grand Masters, he presented a self-contained universe that answered most of the questions that it raised.

Chinese Women in a Cangue, c. 1880. Albumen Print

I began collecting photographs in the mid 1970s to show to my students, as well as for my own pleasure; I couldn’t afford prints by most of the "name" photographers (even though they were inexpensive by today’s standards). So, having little money, I had to learn to rely on my instincts, by developing a discerning eye, by searching out remarkable images that no one else wanted or even saw as worth having. That was the greatest challenge, and increasingly the greatest pleasure. It was very exciting: slightly subversive, but extremely liberating. I looked for striking images by unknown photographers as alternatives to prints by the masters...

From the very beginning these photographs answered far fewer questions than they raised. Without the associations and validation that accompanied prints by well-known photographers, I ventured into new territory every time I bought an anonymous photograph. Anyone with money could buy a Cameron or a Weston; but acquiring a great unknown (and thereby unvalidated) image was much riskier (but ultimately far more satisfying). I have built my collection—which I came to call Forgotten Photographs—out of the conviction that the strength and diversity of the medium come less from its pantheon of recognized masters than from its anonymous vernacular evolution, and out of a growing urge to validate a populist point of view.

 

Portrait of a Man, Quarter Plate Daguerreotype, c. 1840s

Father and Son, c 1938. Kodachrome Transparency

Forgotten Photographs consists of over four thousand original images encompassing the entire history of photography, from the jewel-like Daguerreotypes of the 1840s, through the wet- and dry-plate variations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the modern snapshot, generated by the millions today. Unlike the master images in the history books, these photographs bring little with them in the way of context; they exist primarily as isolated photographic statements. Devoid of the associations and provenance provided by famous names, they are open to fresh new meanings and relationships within the overall context of the collection itself, thus raising the act of collecting to the level of creation, and not incidentally, demonstrating that a collection may profitably be seen as an artistic act of assemblage.

Viewers of the collection have the disconcerting experience of encountering image after image they’ve never seen before, and, without the reassuring context of recognizable names, are forced to fall back on their own aesthetic resources. Looking through this collection, one begins to suspect that photographic history is a good deal larger and more involved than one had previously imagined. Furthermore, Forgotten Photographs demonstrates that categories like "amateur," "professional," "commercial" and "artistic" may ultimately be groundless, and that in the hands of almost anyone, photography can be an authentic and universal means of self-expression. As I looked at these images in their hundreds and thousands, a serious discrepancy began to appear between what I found in the neat little universe of the photographic history books and what I was seeing out in the actual world. These photos suggested that from the beginning there were vastly more highly skilled and artistically sophisticated photographers than the books and museum exhibitions led one to believe. Photography’s great masters, I learned, were only the tip of the iceberg. Clearly there had to be other ways of looking at and other criteria for judging photographs.

 

Martin Luther King, March On Washington, 1963.
Original Polaroid Photograph which was Dropped and Marched Upon

I discovered many examples of innovative technical or artistic accomplishments made anonymously years before the masters made them, illustrating how, from the beginning, the democratic impulse and the emerging technologies advanced hand in hand. I found whole categories of images and image-making, usually of a vernacular or utilitarian nature, not mentioned (or given short shrift) in standard photographic history, examples such as images documenting the pride of small town merchants in their storefronts in town after town; family albums imaginatively put together, usually by a single individual (often as not a woman) to preserve her family’s history; advertising photographs in all their variety and ubiquity—unless they are by an Edward Steichen or a Richard Avedon. I learned different ways of looking at photographs than by comparing them to examples by the masters, and different criteria for examining them, difficult though it is to totally abandon the fine art criteria (technical, aesthetic, and social) that I had grown up with.

'Viewers of the collection have the disconcerting experience of encountering image after image they’ve never seen before, and, without the reassuring context of recognizable names, are forced to fall back on their own aesthetic resources.'

As the Forgotten Photographs collection grew, it became increasingly clear that standard photographic history was less a complete world than merely the first settlements on the shore of a vast continent for which there was overwhelming evidence, but which, as yet, was essentially unexplored. I came to see this metaphorical new continent as democracy. Clearly photography was widely received from its birth as a democratic medium; ordinary people by the millions—most of them with little or no artistic background—successfully became photographers. To an extent possible with no other art form, the aesthetic efficacy of photography was available to practitioners regardless of whether they conceived of themselves as artists or not. It emerged as a true vernacular art medium, fully formed and remarkably mature from its very beginning.

Beaumont Newhall had an agenda which we can all respect, and from which everyone has benefited: his success in the art world conflict he helped to foment is what has made photohistory what it is today, and what empowers us to move ahead. Today we too have an agenda, which I here suggest is to radically expand Newhall’s model of photographic history in ways that take into account the immense breadth and variety of the medium and its profoundly democratic appeal.

At the same time I have been evolving these ideas, others have been moving in similar directions, historians such as Michel Frizot in his A New History Of Photography, with essays by nearly thirty international contributors. As these historians and others began to look beyond Newhall in their writings, so did I in my collecting. I hope that Forgotten Photographs delights the eye as well as stimulates the mind, and that it produces many more questions than answers.

—Rodger Kingston

This post republishes with permission a lecture delivered at "The Vernacular Reframed," a two-day academic conference that took place at Boston University in November, 2004. This is the first time the lecture has been published.

Rodger is beginning to build a gallery of some of the pictures from the collection.

Inset illustrations:
Animal Rescue League, c. 1930s. Gelatin Silver Print
An Early Photo Booth, c. 1915. Gelatin Silver Print

All photographs from the Kingston Collection.

The recent book featuring the Kingston Collection is In the Vernacular: Photography of the Everyday by Stacey McCarroll Cutshaw and Ross Barrett.

 

Vesuvius Erupting, 1872. Albumen Print

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Comments

[Juha Haataja]

It is indeed highly interesting to look at "everyday" photographs.

What I'm wondering is whether there has been much change over the years in disseminating photography ideas. Previously you saw daily hundreds of images in newspapers, now you have access to millions (billions?) of images on the net.

There is a lot of copying of ideas and styles, even to the point of tiredness, but in the "long tail" there is a great deal of originality also.

Could some day there be a "Forgotten Photography" collection (or curatorship) in the digital realm?

[Geoff Wittig]

Beaumont Newhall did more than simply shape the image of photography to match the art world's requirements. He placed a heavy thumb on the scale, imposing a very narrow interpretation of what photographic art could look like. Pictorialism was actively disparaged in ways both subtle and obvious. A.D. Coleman's scathing and witty "Conspicuous by His Absence: Concerning the Mysterious Disappearance of William Mortensen" discusses how Newhall and his associates ruthlessly expunged all traces of a very prominent artist from the photographic "canon". Mortensen certainly produced a lot of tacky kitsch, but also many genuinely beautiful images, and he taught many photographers who went on to great things. Yet Newhall and friends "disappeared" Mortensen from photographic history as efficiently as any Stalinist censor with scissors and glue.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I love the Vesuvius eruption you chose. My other big favorite so far is the San Francisco fire picture.

I seem in general to really like photos skimmed from the past's photostream by a good editor. Everybody knows about shorpy.com, right?

[Nick]

Well, I can tell you from perusing the AIPAD show going on in New York right now, if you put a famous photographer's name on a photograph that's nothing particularly special, but is a "vintage" print, bring money.

[Bill Poole]

The father-and-son Kodachrome is astonishing. One longs to understand artistic intent--for example, did the photographer deliberately build the image to balance the man and his reflection in the car window? You have to assume so, and it is an absolutely wonderful image in any case.

[Clayton Lofgren]

A great gallery.
The reminder about shorpy.com was good too.

[Michael W]

Vernacular & found photography can be great; of course it's all down to the eye of the collector/curator. I love the shot of the cat leaping out of the suitcase.

[Ken Tanaka]

Thank you for a wonderful essay, Rodger. This truly looks like a wonderful rich stew. I kick myself for not pulling the trigger on buying it immediately. By the time I made a decision to break my self-imposed vow not to buy any more photo books they were back-ordered.

The "history" of photography and the works paraded as iconic examples have, indeed, begun to show their wear and their relative shallowness. I believe, however, that this is just beginning to change due to a confluence of several factors. Here are two.

First consider that the first full generation of serious photo collectors is now dying. These are people who bought prints since the 1950's, the 1940's, and even the 1930's for relatively tiny prices. Many of these collectors had very eclectic tastes and took great pride in finding odd works. Many of these collections are now being donated to museums.

Museums, in turn, are very much on the hunt for fresh exhibitions, particularly at a time when it's becoming more challenging to attract visitors. Photography is a -big- draw at museums that have significant permanent collections and are near art schools. Yes the public wants to see the "classics" but, since most people occasionally snap a shutter themselves, they also want to see new "classics". They're starved to broaden their perspectives on photograph's history. As a small example, the Art Institute of Chicago will, in 2010, feature an exhibit on photographic scrap-booking. This is a collection of amateur works, many of which date back a century or more. It's a subject barely ever touched and it's taken the curator years to build. But there's already tremendous interest in the exhibit.

So be patient and enjoy the ride. Photography is a very, very young art form.

[Scott Stewart]

www.squareamerica.com

as vernacular as it gets.

[Jeremy]

I don't think I have any particular pearls of wisdom to add, but I'd just like to say that that was a fantastic essay that has inspired me to really explore the history and purpose of photography. Thank you, it really was special.

[Ken Tanaka]

Just a brief note to remark that I've just received a copy of this book. What a wonderful gem...for only fifteen bucks, no less!

Thanks so much for the heads-up on this, Mike. And, of course, thanks to Rodger and the other authors of this work. Really terrific stuff.

Personally, I plan to begin needling the curatorial staff at the Art Institute of Chicago's photo department to assemble such an exhibit. Among the over seventeen thousand pieces in the collection I absolutely know that we have what it takes for such an exhibit. (Plus we have a new chair, Matt Witkovsky, who's very eager to pursue such stuff.)