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Englishness; it also creates a very theatrical entry to the
pages that lie inside. The decoration on those pages often
repeats their cover’s overt appeal to nature, displaying
detailed depictions of entwined blackberries, strawber-
ries and even exotic lychie fruit encircling their photo-
graphs. Apart from these signs of an eternally fertile
spring, the album maker is keen to emphasise family
genealogies (adding names as ink captions to many of
the portraits we fi nd within). One page shows a collage
of Cator family members facing us in front of a huge
painted glass window, suitably framed by red curtains.
Through the window we get to see an idyllic seascape
occupied by two sailing boats. Another page shows a
similar gathering in front of another huge piece of inte-
rior architecture, a fi replace. This scene of domestic bliss
features an equally huge elliptical photographic portrait
of a young child hanging over the mantlepiece in an
ink frame while a more suitably-scaled dog curls up in
front of the hearth. Some scenes are drawn from a more
whimsical imagination. In one, the album maker has a
man and a woman, each cut from a separate photograph,
occupying a row-boat headed out to sea. But perhaps
the most unusual image centers on a large jester fi gure
dressed in a striped red, yellow and blue costume. With
a sardonic expression on his face, the jester tosses eleven
thumbnail-sized albumen portraits from his gathered
apron, scattering them over the surrounding landscape
like so much seed.
Vernacular photographic practices often took place in
the home. In the years around the advent of the twentieth
century, for example, it was not uncommon for women
to turn their family snapshots into cyanotypes printed
on cloth and then to sew them into pillow slips or quilts.
One such pillow slip in the collection of Eastman House
in Rochester, New York, consists of thirty of these blue
images machine-sewn together, all but one showing typi-
cal outdoor scenes of the kinds everyone has taken on
family holidays. Some feature male and female portraits,
while others depict landscapes; one shows the interior of
a house with its own complement of photographs sitting
on top of a bookcase. Each image no doubt prompted a
happy memory for the members of this family. But the
pillow as a whole was also a reminder within the home of
the outside world that it refers to, a constant reference to
a picturesque elsewhere. The production of these kinds
of photographic domestic keepsakes was encouraged
by women’s magazines of this period, and was infl u-
enced more broadly by an Arts and Crafts movement
concerned to preserve hand-craft traditions in the face
of expanding industrialisation. So the apparent ordinari-
ness of this object belies the deeper social and cultural
complexities embodied in its making. The physicality
of this pillow’s fabric, signalled in the unpredictable
play of its straight seams and crumpled edges, is also
a signifi cant aspect of its capacity to induce a memory
experience, giving these photographs substance and
texture, making them touchable and warm, and allow-
ing past and present to permanently cohabit as part of
everyday domestic life.
These few examples are but the tip of an iceberg of
vernacular photographic practices not often considered
or even acknowledged in standard histories of photogra-
phy. Although the emphasis here has been on practices
that elaborate or add to the photograph, we could have
as easily chosen to look at groups of unadulterated
images drawn from advertising, ethnography, religion,
pornography, science, leisure, journalism, criminology,
tourism, business, government, or a host of other fi elds.
What vernacular practices all have in common is that
their photographs are typical and generic, rather than
exceptional or innovative. They represent the visual cul-
ture of everyday life, sometimes poignant and creative
but more often banal and utilitarian. Whether made by
identifi able professional photographers or unknown
amateurs, these are mostly conformist kinds of pho-
tographs, reproducing established social and aesthetic
conventions in an effort to fulfi ll certain specifi c func-
tions. These functions, ranging from the sentimental to
the commercial, have little connection to the interests of
high art. Nor do vernacular photographs lend themselves
to the usual art historical systems of evaluation, based
as these are on originality and rarity, masterpieces and
great masters. As a consequence, if vernacular practices
are to be included in photography’s history, a whole, new
way of doing that history will have to be devised.
Geoffrey Batchen
See also: Calotype and Talbotype; Daguerreotype;
Mounting, Matting, Passe-Partout, Framing,
Presentation; Wet Collodion Positive Processes; and
Albumen Print.Further Reading
Geoffrey Batchen, ‘What is Vernacular Photography?: a collec-
tive discussion’ (including Daile Kaplan, Douglas Nickel,
Elizabeth Hutchinson, Bill Hunt, Elizabeth Edwards, André
Gunthert), History of Photography, 24: 3 (Autumn 2000),
229–231.
Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Vernacular Photographies,’ Each Wild Idea:
Writing, Photography, History, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 2001, 56–80, 199–204.
Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remem-
brance (exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
& Princeton Architectural Press, 2004).
Michel Braive, The Photograph: A Social History, New York:
McGraw Hill, 1966.
Stanley Burns, Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype and the
Decorative Frame 1860–1910: A Lost Chapter in American
Portraiture, New York: The Burns Press, 1995.
Heinz K. Henisch and Bridget A. Henisch, The Photographic
Experience 1839–1914: Images and Attitudes, University
Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.
Daile Kaplan, Pop Photographica: Photography’s Objects in