It is important to remember that an anonymous photographer is simply a photographer whose name we have lost, perhaps temporarily. When we recover it, and find out the name of his town and his wife (or her husband), we can begin writing dissertations about him or her, but the work has not changed.
John Szarkowski, interviewed by Mark Durden, via American Suburb X
As usual, Szarkowski manages to cut to the heart of the matter — in this case, the matter of “vernacular” photography. As I may have hinted previously here at 1/125, references to “vernacular” photography or its various synonyms and relatives (anonymous, found, snapshot) almost always make me cringe and lose interest.
It is not that I am opposed to some body of photographs to which these terms may refer. What bothers me is the authorial attitude implicit in attempts by writers, artists, bloggers, and curators to explain what it is that is supposed to interest me when I am seeing their aggregations of such photographs. The implication is that the photographs in themselves do not have value except by virtue of being found and arranged by some credentialed individual.
I am reminded in these cases of the Calvin and Hobbes strip in which Calvin signs a snowy landscape so that he can sell it as a work of art. This sort of authorial appropriation can be regarded as an act of audacity and cleverness, or as a furtive act of intellectual laziness; I’m sure in many cases it is a blend of the two. But in either case, what makes the act possible is the conspicuous absence of the real author, who is unable to speak up for his or her intentions and desires regarding the work.
Given this, I think that many artistic and curatorial enterprises based on found photography look a bit shabby in light of Szarkowski’s reminder above. It is hard not to feel that a major part of the perceived value of these photographs to their finders is precisely the absence of an author, or of an author who has any kind of power or presence, and that if an author of this kind was introduced into the scenario, the finders might suddenly turn their attention elsewhere. (In other words, what attracts finders to such photographs is often not the strength of their content but their weakness, their vulnerability to appropriation.)
(Note: I should acknowledge that I’m doubtless stretching Szarkowsi’s words far outside his original intentions for them, since my reading of them could, with very minimal effort, be adapted to explain equally my distaste for the work of some photographers whom Szarkowski championed, like Eggleston.)
