different guises alongside a series of men who are
abruptly cut out of the final prints. The ‘‘parts’’
series again exposes the tacit cultural assumptions
that undergird snapshot meaning, citing not only
the unifying function of vernacular photography as
a form of interpersonal intimacy, but also the dis-
connect that often occurs between photographic
representation and reality and the ominous subtext
of that which is edited out, unseen in the chronicles
of contemporary snapshots.
Finally, and building on the growing cultural
fascination with the anonymous, vintage snapshot,
Lorie Novak uses vernacular photography as the
basis for her ongoing web projectCollected Visions
(http://cvisions.cat.nyu.edu/mantle). Novak’s web
project is an archive of vernacular images and
accompanying narratives. Visitors may submit an
image, they may search the archive for certain types
of images, or they may add a story (real or fic-
tional) to an image (either their own or someone
else’s). By using the internet as a forum for people
to display their own photographs and narrate their
reactions to others’ photographs, Novak wrestles
with the problem of making private photographs
public. By refusing both private specificity and
aesthetic detachment, Novak uses the culture of
vernacular photography in both its uniformity
and its singularity to create a communal, virtual
photographic experience. And by exhibiting both
the individual anomaly of real snapshots and the
cultural currents that guide their production, she
invites the viewer to recognize the paradoxical nat-
ure of vernacular photography as a whole.
CatherineZuromskisSeealso: Barthes, Roland; Boltanski, Christian;
Brownie; Camera: Disposable; Family Photography;
Feldmann, Hans-Peter; Novak, Lorie; Photographic
‘‘Truth’’; Portraiture; Representation; Social Repre-
sentation; Spence, Jo; Wedding Photography
Further Reading
Barthes, Roland.Camera Lucida. London: Jonathan Cape,
1982.
Batchen, Geoffrey. ‘‘Vernacular Photographies.’’Each Wild
Idea: Writing, Photography, History. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2001.
Batchen, Geoffrey, with Daile Kaplan, Douglas Nickel, Eli-
zabeth Hutchinson, William Hunt, Elizabeth Edwards,
and Andre ́Gunthert. ‘‘Vernacular Photographies: Res-
ponses to a Questionnaire.’’History of Photography24,
no. 3 (2000).
Bourdieu, Pierre.Photography: A Middle-Brow Art. Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 1990.
Chalfen, Richard. Snapshot Versions of Life. Bowling
Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press,
1987.
Coe, Brian, and Paul Gates.The Snapshot Photograph: The
Rise of Popular Photography. London: Ash & Grant,
1977.
Fineman, Mia.Other Pictures: Anonymous Photographs
from the Thomas Walther Collection. Santa Fe: Twin
Palms Publishers, 2000.
Hirsch, Marianne.Family Frames: Photography, Narrative,
and Postmemory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1997.
Kaplan, Daile.Pop Photographica: Photography’s Objects
in Everyday Life, 1842–1969. Toronto: Art Gallery of
Ontario, 2003.
Kouwenhoven, John.Arts in Modern American Civilization.
New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc, 1948.
Lee, Nikki S.Projects. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Pub-
lishers, 2001.
Nickel, Douglas R.Snapshots: The Photography of Every-
day Life, 1888 to the Present. San Francisco: San Fran-
cisco Museum of Modern Art, 1998.
Spence, Jo, and Patricia Holland, eds.Family Snaps: The
Meaning of Domestic Photography. London: Virago,
1991.
Warhol, Andy.Andy Warhol Photography. Pittsburgh and
Hamburg: The Andy Warhol Museum and Hamburg
Kunsthalle, 1999.
West, Nancy Martha.Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM
The Word & Image Department, Photographs Sec-
tion at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in
London is one of the museum’s 14 areas of collecting
and holds the national collection of the United King-
dom of the art of photography. A changing selection
of nineteenth and twentieth century and contempor-VERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHY