the quotidian space and practice of the home, the
vernacular photograph produces depth of meaning.
Thus, the aesthetic quality of the image, its formal
characteristics and its visual style, are secondary if
not superfluous to its critical function.
Collecting Vernacular Photographs
But this does not mean that vernacular photography
is without aesthetic merit. As an increasingly popular
item for collectors, vernacular photography has
taken on a whole new, and somewhat more compli-
cated, raft of characteristics. What was once the
pastime of a few individuals, sifting through boxes
of papers and old albums at garage and estate sales is
fast becoming a major collecting industry. Flea mar-
kets dedicated to old photographs, vintage photo-
graphy experts on the American public television
programAntiques Roadshow, and major museum
exhibitions such as the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art’sSnapshots: The Photography of Every-
day Life, 1888 to the Present(1998) and the Metro-
politan Museum of Art’sOther Pictures: Anonymous
Pictures from the Thomas Walther Collection(2000),
suggest that the search for aesthetic content within
the vernacular photographic tradition is on the rise.
As aesthetic objects these photographs combine the
intimacy of the personal snapshot, the conceptual
challenge of found object art, and the cultivated
mystery of the museum artifact detached from its
original context. But whether or not these images
still qualify as vernacular photography once they
are aestheticized in a museum context is again a
subject for debate. Almost always divested of any
reference to the photographer, the subject, or the
specifictimeandplaceinwhichtheimagewas
taken, the vernacular photograph in these aesthetic
contexts is stripped bare of the practical origin from
which it gained its vernacular meaning. Further-
more, the qualities that signify value in vernacular
contexts are quite distinct from those that provide
aesthetic intrigue (and value) to the collector or
curator. Pricked by what she defines as the ‘‘success-
ful failures [and] fortuitous misfires’’ of vernacular
photography, Mia Fineman champions precisely
those photographic mistakes that are edited out of
the domestic photographic narrative (Fineman,
2000, not paginated). While such curators’ and scho-
lars’ efforts direct new attention to a vast and under-
studied area of photography, the canonization of
vernacular photography as art or aesthetic artifact
also undercuts the focus on everyday practice that is
so lacking within histories of photography in the first
place. This issue has prompted Batchen to question
the very underpinnings of the photographic canon:
‘‘Why not...insist on the vernacularity of the art
photograph (its specificity to a particular regional
culture) and include it in our historical discussions
as but one type of vernacular photograph among
many?’’ (Batchen, 2001, 76). As a valuable and
growing commercial industry however, the intellec-
tual conflicts surrounding the aestheticization of the
vernacular photograph are not likely to be resolved
any time soon.Vernacular Photography as Fine Art
Thevernacularphotographplaysanother,albeitless
controversial, role in the realm of the aesthetic as a
cultural artifact in the work of a number of postmo-
dern artists. The prototypical example of this sub-
genre (of sorts) is Andy Warhol’s use of a wide
variety of vernacular photographs as maquettes for
his silkscreen paintings. Notorious for his slippery
and often indistinct separation of art and life, War-
hol surrounded himself with images of all kinds. In
addition to being an avid collector of newspaper
clippings, mug shots, and Hollywood publicity stills,
Warhol was also an obsessive snapshooter. Many of
his photographs of friends and celebrities collected
with other vernacular images in his monthly ‘‘time
capsules’’ (now in the archives at the Andy Warhol
Museum) illustrate Warhol’s fascination with pho-
tography in truly vernacular modes. In contrast
to the vintage beauty of the vernacular images in
theSnapshotsandOther Picturesexhibitions, War-
hol’s engagement with photography seems defiantly
anti-aesthetic, raising questions about how far one
can or should push the boundary between art and
the vernacular. Other leading contemporary artists
who commonly use photographs from vernacular
sources include German painter Gerhardt Ritcher,
Christian Boltanski, and Hans-Peter Feldmann.
More recently, Korean-American photographer
Nikki S. Lee has made a career of questioning and
often parodying the cultural constructions of snap-
shot photography. Her early ‘‘projects’’ are snap-
shot-style images of herself performing as part of
various communities (lesbians, yuppies, school-
girls, tourists). Indistinguishable from the most
mundane snapshots but for the reappearance of
Lee in every image, these images call attention to
the sameness of images in the vernacular mode
despite the cultural difference of these groups.
And by shifting so dramatically from one identity
to the next, she raises questions about the authen-
ticity of the snapshot image. In her later ‘‘parts’’
series, the artist again poses for her own camera inVERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHY