memory or a far away loved one. Without a real
interpersonal connection between viewer and subject,
the vernacular photograph holds little visual interest
for the casual observer and is easily dismissed as
banal cliche ́. But within its discrete frame of personal
reference, the vernacular photograph is charged with
mysterious but potent sentimental meaning.
But characterizations of the vernacular as the sen-
timental degree zero of photographic representation
are only half the story. As fueled as vernacular
photography may be by emotion and an instinctual
approach to image making, the vernacular is also
undoubtedly influenced by cultural constructions of
photographic meaning. As Hirsch and West recog-
nize, while vernacular photography, or more specifi-
cally, snapshot photography (on which, more
below), trades on notions of innocence and essential
humanity, this emphasis on photographic naı ̈vete ́is
itself a cultural construction. Indeed, as Pierre Bour-
dieu suggests inPhotography: A Middle-Brow Art:
...taking the effect for the cause, photographic practice,
subject to social rules, invested with social functions,
and therefore experienced as a ‘need’, is explained with
reference to something that is actually its consequence,
namely the psychological satisfaction it produces.
(Bourdieu 1990, 15)The production and consumption of vernacular
photographs has been driven since its origin by an
increasingly vast commercial and cultural industry.
In the marketing of film, cameras, albums, frames,
and a host of other photographic paraphernalia,
commercial interests have defined and honed the
ways in which photography fits into daily practice.
And in the symbolic use of vernacular-style images in
film, television, and print media, the culture industry
forges links between individual photographic prac-
tice and public morality. While we may embrace
photography as a spontaneous and essential element
of our relations to the world and the people we love,
Hirsch and others have provocatively suggested that
the visual codes of vernacular photography are ulti-
mately hegemonic. And the homogeneity of vernacu-
lar photographic production and consumption has as
much to do with commercial and cultural models of
photographic practice as it does with any essential
human relation to camera or image. Does this photo-
graphic hegemony cancel out the visceral response
that so many individuals have come to associate with
vernacular photography? Not entirely, but it does
provide an important caveat to the elemental rhetoric
that casts vernacular photography as instinctual,
innocent, and pure. For this reason, most compre-
hensive analyses of vernacular photography wrestle
with this paradox in an attempt to reconcile the
Barthesian fascination of the photograph to the indi-
vidual, and the rigid influence of cultural coding.The Snapshot
Of the wide variety of photographic genres that
might qualify as vernacular, the most paradigmatic
example is probably the snapshot. While the origins
of the term ‘‘snapshot’’—a style of hunting where
shots are taken with no particular aim—suggests
spontaneity, the snapshot photograph has since
come to signify a far more complex form of photo-
graphic practice. And in its various nuances, the
snapshot genre provides insight into the larger cate-
gory of vernacular photography as a whole.
Whether of friends or family, archived in albums,
displayed in frames, or tucked away in shoeboxes
under the bed, snapshots are powerful personal
mementos: nostalgic traces of people or moments
past and testaments to personal intimacy or familial
accord. Snapshots are generally made not by pro-
fessional photographers, but by friends, family
members, or anonymous bystanders drafted into
the task, and as such, the images are often techni-
cally uninteresting and simply composed. Yet since
the visual pleasure of the image depends more on
sentimental, subjective concerns rather than aes-
thetic ones, the straightforward visual style, as
long as it is legible, does not hamper the image’s
affective power. Indeed, despite the uniformity and
visual banality of the snapshot, the image, within a
particular context of personal interaction, possesses
a deep emotional significance.
Central to the affective quality of the snapshot is
the complexity of meanings present in a single image.
The snapshot is far more than just a personal record
of things past. Rather the snapshot is a key tool in
the establishment of memory and identity. Drawing
on the essential truth claim of photography or what
Barthes has called the trace of ‘‘that-has-been,’’ the
snapshot establishes its subject, no matter how posed
or contrived, as ‘‘real.’’ By depicting a child at its
most adorable, a vacation vista at its most spectacu-
lar, or a family group at its most connected and
harmonious, snapshot images preserve an idealized
facet of experience while letting other, less pleasur-
able aspects of that experience slip away. This
intense visual power has made the snapshot a vital
part of daily life. And like all vernacular modes, the
snapshot has developed its own cultural routines.
Certain events today would be incomplete without
photographic documentation. The act of taking a
photograph (or smiling for the camera when aVERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHY