Photography as Popular Culture

Author(s): JONATHAN GREEN

Source: Journal of the University Film Association, Vol. 30, No. 4, TOPICS IN FILM/VIDEO/
PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY (Fall 1978), pp. 15-20
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video Association
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 if" "Ii
Photography as Popular Culture
JONATHAN GREEN
The Ohio State University

Perhaps more than any other medi the camera to organize the picture on its own
image-making plane
um, the avant-guard history of photography is optical, mechanical and chemical terms. Of all
intimately linked to its everyday use as documenta photographers, the snapshooter interferes least with
tion, entertainment, and popular art. Because of its the photographic process, producing photographs
short history, its inherentmechanical and optical which are perhaps themost human and visually
nature, and the great democracy of its use, photogra complex of all photographic images. As Lisette
phy has always been tied to popular culture. Model has commented, "The snapshot comes closest
to truth."

Photographyhas always been popular art. In spiteof

many early predictions that the medium would For the snapshooters themselves, these photographs
become a high art form, the vast majority of are merely souvenirs. Yet the continuous existence of
photographers have not used it to explore and resolve millions of theseevanescentphotographic imageshas
theproblems of formand expressionwhich we have formeda culturaland visual presencewhich has been
come to know as art. Rather, reexamined for clues about the nature of
sophisticated photo continually
graphs have been used most
extensively in three
photographic seeingand imagemaking.The power of
ways: as snapshots, as popular and commercial "art", the innocentcamera, theprimacy of thedeeply felt
and as an essential visual means of recording the personal world, and the haunting power of the
news. These three impersonal, publicly sanctioned form of documentation will
snapshot's unpretentious
ways of recordingtheworld are neatly summedup in exercise a profound impact on the sophisticated
the three headings frequentlyfound in the pho photographyof the sixtiesand seventies.
tographic annuals of the first fiftyyears of this
Fine and News Stylized Hatftruths
century: Family Pictures, Pictures, Popular Photography:
Pictures.
Ifsnapshootersphotograph out ofalmost totalvisual
The Snapshot: Documents of Innocence innocence, "popular photographers"?people with a

Sunday hobby,members of Professional Photogra

Of these threeareas, theendeavorwhich is the least phers of America, and photo journalists?work
conscious, the least discriminating, themost self-effac within a cultural ambience that has evolved its own
ing, and the least sophisticated?the snapshot?is ethical, social, political and visual codes. Far from
also the most consistently vital, straight their work adheres strictly to a particular
undoubtedly being naive,
forward and moving of popularly produced images. set of visual rules.
The snapshot is a photograph made out of almost
total visual innocence. It is the photograph used as a The popular photographer believes that his work
means of making private, family memorabilia, of must go beyond theblatant objectivityand vulgarity
recording the most ordinary, personal and commun associated with the naive snapshot. The snapshot's
al affairs. While snapshots have been made solely for unalteredpictureof lifemust be replacedwith a more
individual, personal recollection, they are remark decorous, stylized, ideal version. The actual world in

ably homogeneous in subject matter, social view which the popular photographer lives is not a
point, and visual style. They are made at eye level, dignifiedenough subject.His cameramust be turned
from the front and center, from the middle distance, toward those subjectswhich theacademic traditions
and generally in bright,outdoor light.Yet, because of art have legitimizedas suitable. The popular
snapshooters are almost totally concerned with cen photographer is always several generations behind

tering the subject, the forms at the edges are acciden the time. Even now, his subjects are still the pictorial,
tal, unexpected, unstructured, and?by any tradi the anecdotal, the sedate genre study. Rather than
tional standards of pictorial Tightness?incorrect. particular people or events, the popular photogra
Once centering the subject, the snapshooter allows pher focuses only on general types.

In form as well as content, Fine Photography?or

This article is an abridged version of Chapter 2 from "art" photography as it is known in some circles?is
Professor Green's forthcoming book, Recent American used to repeat and reiterate mass culture's concep
Photography, to be published by Oxford University Press. tions of grace and beauty. Fine Photographs are

JOURNALOF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXX, 4 (Fall 1978) 15

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 THE SNAPSHOT: \ . . Eye Level, from the front,
from the middle distance, and ... in bright outdoor
light." (From the Forman C ollection.)

POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY: . . based on the notion that

becomes art by isolating . . .
photography [the] inherently
interesting or beautiful." (Laura Gilpin, "Big Bed?Tiny Tot,"
U.S. Camera 1943; reprinted by permission of Ms. Gilpin.)

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"beautiful" precisely because their subjects and forms response as possible. The photo-essay represented the
are beautiful: sunsets, calendar girls, patchwork latest step in the journalistic and technological trend

patterns, babies, pussycats. And even in the recording toward conveying and popularizing the news; of
of the news and events, the photographs of the telling the story at. a glance. The photographs invited
no
pictorial journalist adhere closely to stereotyped viewers' attention and convinced them of the story's
tions of political relevance. Only in the rare accuracy. The words reinforced the apparent truth
of a natural or man-made fulness of the photographs. Yet such a close relation
spectacular photograph
disaster do we find the breaking of traditional ship between words and images is tenuous at best.
rules of structure. Headings and captions tendby theirverynature tobe
simplistic and redundant. They communicate not so

Popular photography is based on the notion that much by describing thepictureas by identifying
and
photographybecomes art by isolatingthose objects confirming what the reader already knows. The use
that are inherentlyinterestingor beautiful.To aid of an identifying caption?name, person, place, or
the popular photographer in simplifyingthe real event?becomes a mere tautology.
world, a whole range of devices has been invented,
devices to thwart the all-encompassing eye of the The photo-essay neatly solved problems of identi
camera: backdrops, lights, canvas textured paper, ficationand descriptionby ignoringthemaltogether.
special costumes. The majority of documentary presentationsof the
'thirties used captions that were associative or
The use of some of thesedevices can be partially politically relevant, captions which repeatedwhat
explained by the popular photographer's continued the mass audience either wanted to hear, or what
reliance on some of the technical and cosmetic tools the editor thoughtthey should know. The caption's
thatwere needed in the early days of themedium relationship to the photograph was incidental. In
to facilitate the long exposure required by slow You Have Seen Their Faces, for example, Erskine
emulsion. But these techniques have far outlasted Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White explain that
their actual need. "the legends under the pictures are intended to

express the authors' own conception of the senti

For the popular photographer space becomes back ments of the individual portrayed; they do not
ground rather than physical or moral environment. pretend to reproduce the actual sentiments of these
Bland tapestries and seamless papers carefully ex people." Other books let free association wander
clude any hint of actuality. The demands of even further, using the sententious and sentimental
American advertising,which grew up along with words of the President, the Congress, or prophets
theexpanded uses of photography,push thespace of of culture to underscore the political meaning and
the real world further into the background. Ad relevance of the photographs. In Sherwood

vertisingphotographs surround people and objects Anderson's Home Town (1940), a Marion Post
world of sophistication,elegance
with the illusionary photograph of cars in frontof the town hall on a
and wealth.Time, personifiedas childhood or old age snow-covered Vermont street is given the caption:
rather than seen as
temporal flux. Time is a "America must keep rolling." And ten years later
historical rather than actual. This a-historical outlook Arthur Goodfriend generously sprinkled his anti
is associated with a strikinglack of interestin the communist photo essay What Can a Man Believe?
and day-by-day temporal setting. with quotations from Mahavira, Lao-Tse, Buddha,
minute-by-minute
Confucius, Christ, Mohammed, Lincoln, and Harry
The American tradition of high ideals becomes S. Truman?to name only a few. This book, a
translated in popular into insistent precursor of The Family of Man in organization
photography
confidence and yea-saying; a mode in which suf and use
of quotations, is perhaps the most blatant

fering?which rarely appears?is foreign or exotic, and ludicrous example of confounding the actual
or occurs only in those officially sanctioned places: meaning of photographs and words.
the slums, the dustbowl, and the prison. American

popular photography steadfastlyrefusestodeal with Within the photo-essay, the captioned photograph
the actual. Forpopular culture the purpose of art diminishes the specificityand individualityof the
is not to reveal the actual world but to reaffirm person portrayed.By being inherently a generalizing
the ideal. The making of art frees the popular device, ithas no way of indicatingexceptions to the
photographer fromany obligation to truth. rule: the peculiar, the eccentric. Its purpose, as
was so clearly stated in themanifesto published in
the first issue of Life magazine in 1936,was "to
see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events;
The Photo Essay: to watch the faces of the poor and the gesturesof
Photography as Public Relations the proud." In short, itwas to see what was already
known or readily knowable. The idiosyncratic would
The photo-essay was a device developed to guarantee be ignored.Anything out of the ordinarywould
the promotion of the proper image.The strategyof be presentedunder therubricof theexotic.Anything
the photo-essay, which reached its height in the 430s, visuallydisturbingor ambiguous would be relegated
was to leave the viewer as little room for personal to the back page, "Speaking of Pictures."

JOURNALOF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXX, 4 (Fall 1978) 17

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The photo-essay became a perfectvehicle for the
Photography: Reflector of American Values
breezy condescension and condensation that marked
so many "human-interest" stories of the 'thirties and The photo-essay, as it appeared in the books and
The titlesof theFortune and Lifemagazines'
'forties. magazines of the 'thirties, was enormously successful
storiesgive theappearance of dealingwith a specific in crystallizing American facts and symbols. Photo
individual: "Success Story, The Life and Circum graphy was seen as a "universal
language" without
stances of Mr. Gerald Cor kern, Paint Sprayer at the the slightest realization that its communicative power
PlymouthMotor Plant," "Family on Relief;The Life was dependent on American ideals and visual con
and Circumstances of Steve Hatalla, Who Lost His ventions.
Job Four Years Ago," "The Private Life of Swyned
Filling."Yet thecombiningof photographsand texts This insistenceon the general, the ideal, and the
inthesearticlesgave only the illusionof individuality. immediately identifiable is grounded in ways of
The individual is actually reduced to an indistin looking at theworld thatare peculiarlyAmerican.
guishable Everyman. Only when the subject of the The popular photographer'sperspectivederives from
essay is indeed the elemental, when the people our Puritan, idealistic and utilitarian heritage. Ex
pictured seem to embody theWestern notion of plicit in that heritage is a fear of the expression
archetypal man, as inW. Eugene Smith's of emotional A concomitant
"Spanish private experience.
Village," does the photo-essay's methods seem some belief is that the artistic resides exclusively in the
what appropriate. Yet even "Spanish Village" would objectively beautiful. Both of these feelings are
have been stronger had the text been deleted. No one tied to thatconstantlyhauntingAmerican suspicion
today can remember?nor needs to remember?the thatart is simplynot a sufficientlyseriousor practical
pedestrian, reductive caption that went with the endeavor. This in turn generates that quintessentially
moving image of "The Thread Maker." "A peasant American attitude: ifart is to be created at all, it
woman moistens the fibers of locally grown flax as must be socially useful and relevant.
politically
she joins them ina long strandwhich is spun tightby
the spindle (right), thenwrapped around it."Few In America, the popular photographer thus finds
could recitethiscaption. But fewhave forgottenthe himself with only two avenues open for expression
photograph. which are socially the camera can be
acceptable:
used to seek out the traditionalformsand subjects
of beauty, or the camera can be used to make

"socially conscious" statements. The forces of

In Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, perhaps the American culture and have in subtle ways
society
most intenselypersonal and truthful
derivationof the barred the average from making
photographer
photo-essay, Walker Evans and James Agee deter use
radical of the medium. In America, there is no
mined to allow eachmedium to communicate itsfull tradition thatwould legitimizethe photographer's
independent message. They separated the text from search for "self-expression." With this element of
the photographs. Agee insisted that both writing and from the work of the
personal individuality banished
photography were "coequal, mutually independent, popular photographers, their photographs have
and fully collaborative." He understood that as long resulted in cliches.
usually
as photographs and text merely served as illustrations
for one another, the power of each was substantially For the average photographer, photography ismere
diminished. Yet this method of presentation was too ly the pursuit of the good, the pleasurable, the exotic,
demanding fora popular audience. The 1941edition and?since itwas one of the few socially acceptable
was virtuallyignoredby thegeneral public: only 300 ways of dealing with sex?the erotic. I say "pursuit"

copies were sold. The book did not begin to gain because the daring involved inmaking these photo

popular acceptance until itwas reprintedin 1960. graphs resides in the adventure surrounding the act of
photographing,not in thenature of the image itself.
Popular photographers, like big game hunters,al
ways aim at the same targets. Primary importance is
The photo-essay, rather than being as Life has stated attached to themachinery used and to thebusinessof
the "best and most complex product of photography "getting there," not to the uniqueness of the subject
... a distinct art form of great editorial
complexity and
nor the special sensibilityof the photographer.The
sometimes emotional and aesthetic im war photographer Robert Capa this popu
profound expressed
was worst and easiest lar conception of photography when he said, "If your
pact" possibly photography's
product. It sorelyhindered the possibilitiesof indi pictures aren't good, you're not close enough."
vidual as it obscured the photograph's
expression
to provoke, or disturb. The photo Yet as we have seen, these two very American ways of
power challenge
essay reinforcedthepopular notion of photography looking at the world?for beauty, or with a social
as immediate, dramatic and didactic, conscience?also provided the basis for the work of
simplistic,
use to either the sensational several major photographers. The most spectacular
relegating photography's
or the pictorial. It was a great leveler of individual apotheosis of the beautiful occurred first in the
differences;itsaw all people throughthe sentimental photographs of the Photo-Secession and then twenty

eyes of either degradation or nobility. years later in the early work of Edward Weston.

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THE PHOTO-ESSAY: "kA peasant woman moistens the fibers of locally grown flax as she joins them in
a long strand which is spun tightby the spindle (right), then wrapped around it/ Few could recite this
caption. Few have forgotten the photograph." (W. Eugene Smith, "The Thread Maker," Life, 5 April 1951;
reprinted by permission of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona?Tucson.)

JOURNALOF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXX, 4 (Fall 1978) 19

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Western's subjectmatter is essentiallypictorial; it is Seventh:Truthfulness.Honesty,Fidelity."The
identical to the subjects treated by the Sunday camera can not lie. . . ." But it can. Unless

hobbyist: thenude, the landscape, the isolatedbeauti its user does not lie.
ful object. His geniuswas to go beyond the levelsof
surface and transform banal visual formulas Technical standard ....
beauty Eighth:
intomoments of authentic seeing. Similarly, Paul
Strand andWalker Evans put theirown intelligence Ninth: Subject matter. Objective reality,the
and sensibilityin theserviceof the"social" document. world today, theworld in the grip of power
What saved theirwork fromclichewas a relianceon ful forces, the world played upon by death,
personal insight,not just the acceptable social doc war, and famine. The world confronting crisis.
What we finallyfeelinStrand's and
trinesof the time.
Evans's work is their tremendous effectiveness at Tenth: Multiple reproductions.The half-tone,
eitherportrayinglocal detail or wholly molding the the power press, themillions.
world in theirown terms.They did not, as many of
the FSA photographs, shape the world in the Eleventh: For the future. An Archive.

propagandistic terms of a governmental agency.

Twelfth: Propaganda: for peace, for better
housing; for public health; for civil liberties.
Photography: Toward a
Popular Aesthetic Thirteenth: Science: for human betterment.

One of the clearest statements of the popular Fourteenth: The dimension of time: action,
aesthetic is given by Elizabeth McCausland in the motion. The tempo of our century, the ac
1940 edition of U.S. Camera. McCausland defines celeration of history.
the popular photograph "in clean, neat terms, as it
has been used during a hundred years on the In the hands of the popular photographer,photo
American continent."
graphy's virtues are precisely its failures. In trying
to come to gripswith thatworld which photography
What are the criteria garnered from this could really touch, the photographic endeavor is
century?First:A good likeness,thedaguerreo reduced to a series of stirring and rhetorical moments.
type.Truth to the subject, the sitter.Realism, Realism is seen only as a repetitionof those things
honesty, the thing itself, not the photo already seen and known. The subjectsare not things
grapher's subjective, introverted emotion in themselves. Rather they are exaggerated and
about the thing. moralized political viewpoints. Fidelity to subject
ostensiblymeans fidelityto thosematerials which are
Second: Fidelity to materials, textures, as both beautiful and which photograph beautifully.
hair, gravel, silk. A prime beauty of photo The purpose of photography, then, becomes
graphy, the minute rendering of textures. thoroughly didactic and propagandistic.

Third: A popular art. Dentist tradesman made Most importantly, and therefore it appears first on
daguerreotypes in theirspare time.Millions of McCausland's list, the photographer has no obliga
hobbyists today tote Brownies, Kodaks, Ar tion, is infactenjoined fromdealingwith lifefromhis
guses. own individual point of view. "Realism" is not "the
photographer's subjective, introverted emotion about
Fourth: Constant technical . . the thing" and the camera user must not lie. The
growth.
infiniteriches of the visible world are no longer
Fifth:Historical value. American Civil War. available to the individualphotographer.Art could
War?Spain, China; Europe. A baby crying never inthesetermsbecome what Robert Frost called
in the streets. Sudden death from the skies. "a momentary stay against confusion," nor an in
Missouri share-croppers. Destitution on the
wardly conflicting,ambiguous reactionof realpeople
rich American farmlands. Slums in the sha to other real people. As became apparent in the most
dow of Wall Street. The futurewill be in successful photography exhibition of all time,The
terested. Family ofMan, theproperaudience of both thebest
and the worst of such photography is not the
Sixth: Quality individual, nor even the family, but the crowd.

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